Chapter Text
Their flat was small. Not uncomfortably so – it had everything two low-maintenance people needed. There was a kitchen and enough space for a table, there was a sitting room and an office large enough for Scorpius set up with his Potions equipment, there was a bedroom and a bathroom and a window overlooking muggle London, only a few (like, fourteen) blocks from the Ministry.
Scorpius was making dinner when there was a knock on the door. “Oi! Door!” He shouted to Rose as he tried not to burn the pasta sauce.
Rose stuck out her tongue at him before getting up and opening the front door. “Mum?” Rose asked, and Scorpius dropped the metal spoon he was holding. “Hello! What are you doing here?” Rose asked, opening the door wider to let her mother in.
“I came to see you, of course!” Hermione exclaimed. Scorpius wasn’t sure if she was ignoring him or had somehow missed the loud profanities he had uttered when the spoon landed on his foot, splashing him with hot pasta sauce. “I wanted to see how you’ve settled into your new place!” She looked around the sitting room approvingly.
“Yes, it’s quite lovely.” Rose said, still slightly confused as to why her mother was there. “Scorpius and I managed to set up the last of the bookshelf this morning.”
It seemed that Hermione finally noticed Scorpius, who was jabbing the pot with his wand and muttering darkly. “Hello, Scorpius, how are you?” Scorpius turned off the boiling pasta and moved the sauce off the burner.
“Fantastic.” He grunted as boiling water splashed his hand. When Hermione didn’t reply, he drained the pasta and poured the slightly burned sauce over it. “Would you like to have dinner? With us?” Scorpius asked out of convention, but the beaming smile Rose gave him made it worth it.
“That would be nice, thank you.” Hermione said politely.
Dinner was awkward, to say the least. They chatted well enough, with Hermione asking about their jobs and plans and Rose asking about her dad and her mother’s career. Scorpius sat quietly beside Rose, only answering questions directly to him.
“It’s great to see you both so happy.” Hermione said as Rose put their dishes in the dishwasher – Scorpius thrived on some muggle inventions.
“It’s been great here.” Rose agreed, taking a seat beside Scorpius on the couch, and Scorpius smirked at Rose and pulled her against him, kissing the top of her head as though Hermione wasn’t even in the room.
-
Hermione Weasley loved Rose very much, but she didn’t like her choices. She had yet to have a good interaction with Scorpius Malfoy. He was rather impassive at the manor and didn’t leave Rose’s side during the afternoon tea later the same day, though she hadn’t quite blamed him for that – the way some of the other adults were looking at him would make Hermione feel like an outcast, too. And last Christmas was a bit of a nightmare. Honestly, the boy was treated rather rudely, and Albus’s hex was slightly out of line, though Hermione wasn’t about to reprimand her nephew.
But the way he and Rose would look at each other! After they had left school, Scorpius had come over to help her pack, and every time the met eyes it was like no one else was in the room. Hugo seemed to like him, and according to her son they got along quite well at school, so he couldn’t be all that bad, and he and Albus seemed civil when he came to say good-bye to his cousin. He hardly spoke to her or Ron, though.
For almost a year, Hermione believed Rose could do better. Hermione thought she could find a nice boy who would be a gentleman to her family and get a solid job and propose to her daughter by the time she was twenty-five.
Scorpius was not really those things. He didn’t contribute to the conversations unless he was spoken to and apparently he had a job as a potioneer. Needless to say, Rose would be making most of their income for a long time. And he really didn’t seem like the marrying type. But he way he seemed to treat Rose as through she was precious melted her heart ever so slightly. When Hermione has passed by Rose’s closed door when he was at their house, he had been talking to her in a soft voice Hermione didn’t even know he was capable of. And just now, as he acted like she wasn’t even there, instead of feeling insulted she felt relieved.
When he excused himself to go work on a potion bubbling in the next room, Hermione turned to Rose.
“He seems…” Hermione couldn’t find the right adjective. Rose seemed to understand.
“He can come on a little hostile and he’s not really great around people he doesn’t know very well.”
“I can hear you!” Scorpius shouted from the office, though he sounded strangely amused. “Don’t forget ‘slightly impolite’ and ‘prefers not to talk to people in general.’”
Rose rolled her eyes. “But I do love him very much.”
Hermione found herself smiling at her daughter. “I’m very glad to hear that. You and Scorpius should come to dinner on Sunday. Hugo would love to play a game of chess before he goes back to school – he’s always talking about the two of you.”
“That sounds great, mum. We’d love to.” Hermione left the flat significantly more reassured than when she had arrived.
-
“I really don’t want to go to Sunday dinner.” Scorpius said, running a hand down Rose’s arm.
“I really don’t care.” She replied, snuggling into him.
“Your father will try to kill me.”
“The key word here being ‘try.’” Rose said sleepily.
“That is not reassuring.” Scorpius said, but put an arm around her anyway and let himself fall asleep.
Sunday dinner didn’t end in Scorpius’s death. And neither did the Sunday dinner a month later. When Scorpius went to a Quiddich game with about six different members of Rose’s family no one seemed to care about what his last name was. He was just Rose’s boyfriend, like Matt was Roxanne’s boyfriend and Lorcan was Lily’s boyfriend and Lysander was Hugo’s boyfriend. And he was fine with that. He went with Rose to James’s wedding and no one tried to hex him.
“Why did you sit beside me in History? I mean, not just because of Hugo. You said mostly.” Scorpius asked Rose one night as the TV showed re-runs of some muggle show.
Rose gave him a small smile. “Because I thought you were interesting and I wanted to be your friend.”
Scorpius smirked at her. “I’m good with that answer.”
In the end, Scorpius loved Rose, and she loved him back, and nothing else mattered. They weren’t a Malfoy and a Weasley or a devil and an angel. They were Scorpius and Rose and that was all they needed.