Work Text:
Based on the 25 Days Christmas Romance Challenge Tumblr Prompt:
"Character A and Character B meet in the ER on Christmas Eve."
“It’s just a small cut,” Scorp groaned indignantly as his Mother Dearest ushered him to the Floo. “It’s barely a nick, for Merlin’s sake, you don't need to come along!”
Fine, it wasn’t ‘barely a nick’ at all. Parts of him that he’d gotten used to, that had been there since he was born, were now… not there. Instead, they were being held in a plastic bag, far, far away from their place of provenance. Moreover, there were tears in his eyes, he was feeling more than just a little faint and his teeth hurt from all the grinding.
However, if there was anything more mortifying than chopping his finger off on Christmas Eve, that thing was dragging his entire extended family to St Mungo’s with him.
His Grandmother, who had practically fallen headfirst into a bottle of port right before dinner, was currently looking at him rather red-cheeked and blissfully unconcerned - especially considering this whole debacle was her fault.
“You’re missing a finger, darling. And none of us--” here, she hiccupped “--are in any state to fix that,” she added with a laugh, waving a wobbly hand in the general area of the bleeding wound.
Even if everyone in the house hadn’t been three sheets to the wind, it was laughable to think anyone at Malfoy Manor would know the first thing about healing a severed finger - for the most part, the family pursuits lay with severing fingers, not reattaching them.
He, on the other hand, was the wanker who’d managed to almost chop off his hand - while cutting a Christmas pudding of all things.
Were it a turkey there might’ve been a reasonable excuse.
He blamed his Grandmother, as he usually did when things went south. In this case however, there had been a direct correlation between the path of the knife through his digit and the words ‘we could just snip them all, they’d never know’ coming from his Grandmother’s mouth.
And now here he was.
At St Mungo’s.
On sodding Christmas Eve.
Holding a bag with his severed finger.
They’d pumped him full of potions the second he’d arrived and settled him on one of the private waiting rooms - money hadn’t just talked, money had been downright chatty tonight - and now here he was, bleeding all over the white linen.
“Malfoy. Scorpius Malfoy.”
Oh. Oh no.
“Of course it’d be you,” Scorp said, brushing his still intact hand through his hair and letting out a mirthless chuckle.
“Merry Christmas to you too.” There was a grin on Rose Weasley's face as she walked into the room, holding a clipboard and looking like it was Christmas - oh wait. “I’d ask if you had a nice dinner but from the looks of it you had a little too much fun.”
She methodically extracted the bloody cloth bundled around his hand - his grandmother’s scarf, which she’d insisted was 100% cashmere from magical llamas somewhere in Tibet and therefore a far superior bandage than any regular ol’ napkin.
Her hands were gentle as she unwrapped the bundle and Scorp winced as pain shot through him from the 100% natural fibres that had gotten stuck in the dried blood.
The wine he’d inhaled over dinner had kept him anaesthetized for the most part - he wasn’t entirely sure whether this hurt more or less than his Grandmother’s little ‘we should covertly snip all Muggles’ diatribe or not - and the happy potions were clearly doing wonders for his mood. Nevertheless, the second Rose's fingers brushed through his, he felt like someone had smacked him on the face with a bucket of cold water - not the water, the actual bucket.
The skin on his hand where she was touching him had suddenly become far too aware of itself and, therefore, very aware that there was a chunky bit of it missing.
“At least it was a clean cut,” she commented, looking around. “Do you have the… ah, there you go.”
He held out the plastic bag containing his severed index and clenched his jaw, eyes fixed on the stump.
“Don’t look at it.” Rose’s eyes softened as she took the bag and something blissfully warm and comforting washed over him like -- well, like drugs. Except they were drugs of the redheaded, blue-eyed, freckled persuasion. “Come on, let’s get you sorted.”
Of all the people in the world, it just had to be Rose Weasley. The universe couldn’t do him a solid and have someone else be on call tonight, no. They couldn’t have a chance meeting when he was maybe not holding a severed finger, oh no.
He didn’t even ask for it to be a great hair day, all he wanted was to not be the half-drugged, slurring wanker with the bleeding hand and the missing finger - was that too much to ask?
Clearly.
Her calm, steady fingers zeroed in on his and she muttered incomprehensible spell after spell over it. The bleeding, which had been at the very least profuse and at the very worst… comically spouty, had subsided, a small, shimmering film of blue magic holding the wound closed.
“So,” she said calmly, “do you want a new finger or are you terribly attached to the old one?”
Scorp blinked. “A new finger?”
He glanced over at the one on the bag, the bloody, severed, mangled --
“Don’t… look at it,” she repeated, a gloved, impeccably white hand sternly pulling his chin to force him to look at her. “You can have that one or I can grow you a new one. It takes a little longer, but it’s all the same to me.”
It took him a second to process what she was saying, mostly because he was too busy gawking at the hand on his face.
“Well?”
“Would the new one be the same to me?”
“In that it’d feel the same, yes,” Rose said dismissively, “but it won’t be the same-same. If the finger holds any sentimental value --”
“Sentimental value?”
And he’d thought the conversation at the Malfoy Christmas table was lunacy.
Rose’s mouth curled into a smile. “You’d be surprised. We had this bloke over with a severed…” She hesitated, a small crease between her eyebrows before she continued, with a little more conviction, “A severed penis and he was very adamant that he get to keep the old one. Claimed they shared a lot of good memories and that the new one wouldn’t understand.”
Scorp blinked again, his horrified eyes dropping to his nethers. “How on earth did he --”
Rose shrugged. “I didn’t ask and he didn’t volunteer the info. Considering he was very concerned his new dick might judge him, I can only imagine. Now,” she said, straightening herself up and going back to being all business, “what will it be?”
The decision, which had seemed rather obvious a few moments ago, now felt… weightier. What good times had he and that finger shared? What if the new finger didn’t like him? What if it organised a rebellion with his other digits --
“Scorp,” she repeated, looking at him from under her eyelashes with a twinkle in her eye. “It’s a finger.”
Rose Weasley’s eyelashes were a dangerous beast, he realised. You’d find yourself agreeing to all sorts of ludicrous things when they fluttered like that.
“New one it is.”
“Makes sense,” she said, small crinkles on the corner of her eyes as she smiled. “Less mileage.”
“Better shelf-life.”
“Smooth, smooth dolphin skin. I grow excellent nails, too.”
“It comes with a nail?” he asked with a slightly slurred intonation. “You’re spoiling me.”
“All the best for the Malfoy heir.” Rose scoffed, her soft smile never fading. “The higher-ups were fussy about it.”
She patted the bed next to him and he laid down, his hand still in hers as she calmly worked on it, like her sole purpose in life was to fix him and his finger.
“Is that why you’re being nice?”
Was it terrible that he was enjoying this? He’d like to have blamed the drugs but… he’d be lying. Lying because he’d have chopped off ten fingers to get a chance at talking to her like this back at Hogwarts.
Her shoulders shook and she snorted. “I’m always nice. It’s part of the job description.”
“You weren’t always nice.”
“What?” Her eyes opened wide but the rhythmic waving of her wand never stopped. “What do you mean, I was a delight!”
She’d been nice alright - to everyone but him.
She’d demolished him in every test, gloated over his every defeat and overall just made it her business to tear his self-esteem to shreds - not that it had worked, it had mostly just led to a sort of dogged determination to throw her off her sodden pedestal.
She had paraded her Outstandings in front of his eyes and consumed every one of his thoughts to the point he’d found himself counting her freckles instead of sheep at night.
“Fine, let me rephrase that: you weren’t always nice to me.”
“Wasn’t I?”
“You most decidedly were not.”
Her lower lip became caged between her teeth and her hand stopped moving for a second before she resumed whatever it was she was doing - presumably growing him a new finger.
“I didn’t think you needed me to be nice to you.” The words were simple and she offered him a small smile. “I figured…” Her face fell and she set her eyes on his finger, her focus apparently redoubled. “I thought it was just… Did you think…?”
He could’ve saved her from herself, but he was enjoying seeing her squirm. “What did you think it was then?”
Her lips pressed together and she blinked at him. “I thought we were...” She let out a scoff and shook her head. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but I thought we were... flirting? I guess?”
“That was you flirting?”
What’s worse is that he’d been flirting back rather furiously. He’d just never assumed they shared the same brand of pathetic, failed, contrary flirting attempts.
She nodded slowly, eyes carefully trained on his wound. Silent for a few seconds, her forehead scrunched. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the finger growing or the terrible flirting, but he wasn’t about to distract her in case it was the former.
Silence fell upon them as she worked and it was only a few minutes later that she continued, “I know I’m about seven years too late, but I apologise if I ever… hurt you, I guess? I never meant to be unkind and you didn’t act like you were feeling hurt --”
“I wasn’t,” he added quickly, shuffling slightly. “I--”
Her hand tightened around his when he moved and she let out a hiss, “Unless you want a bonus nail, I strongly advise you to stay put. I can knock you out if you want.”
“Sorry. But I was saying I --”
“Maybe an extra dose of sedatives to keep you in the Christmas Cheer,” she proposed. “There’s this one spell --”
“No.”
“-- it’ll rock your world, I promise. Fa-la-la-fabulous, if I say so myself. You’ll see twinkle lights and everything. It can be my Christmas gift to you.”
“I’m good.”
The way her eyes were twinkling was more than enough.
“Alright.” She glanced over at him and her mouth curled slightly. “You don’t know what you’re missing, though.”
“Do you?”
She tutted disapprovingly. “Are you suggesting I use heavily regulated spells for recreational purposes?” Before he could offer her an appropriately mollifying response, she let out a small snigger. “Because you’d be right.”
“Really now. Rose Weasley doing drugs.”
“You haven’t really lived until you tried to study Comparative Herbology while high as a kite.” She shrugged mildly. “Why, Scorpius Malfoy is that disapproval on your face?”
“Not in the least.”
She’d been all over the place at Hogwarts, laughing, cheering, moving with dizzying energy all the time. There was something more controlled about her now, like it was being repressed by the lime green robes and the impeccable gloves - it was good to know she was still in there somewhere.
“I--”
Before he could say anything else, the door flung open and his Grandmother stalked into the room, followed closely by his mum, his dad and three very apologetic looking Medi-Witches.
Somehow, there was still a glass of port in Grandmother Narcissa's hand, which she twirled with contempt. “We’ve been out there waiting forever !” She threw a disapproving glance over her shoulder at the Medi-Witches and then scowled at Rose, who had set her wand aside and gotten up to her feet. “How long does it take to reattach a finger? At this rate, we’ll be ringing the New Year’s here!”
“We’re not reattaching it.” There was a pleasant smile on Rose’s face. “We’re growing a new one.”
She said ‘we’re’ like he was being of invaluable assistance which was nice of her.
His Grandmother blinked. “What was wrong with the old one?”
“Nothing. But who am I to deny the man a new finger if he wants one?”
Scorp’s lips pressed together to suppress a smile.
“Who are you indeed?” Narcissa asked, staring up and down at her with narrowed eyes. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”
Rose extended a still immaculate white glove at her (one that Scorp suspected was self-cleaning at this point) and said, “Rose Granger-Weasley, pleasure.”
The strangled sound that came out of his Grandmother sounded something like ‘djshdsjdh’. His dad had gone a little white and his mother was looking placidly amused, as ever.
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” one of the Medi-Witches said, stepping bravely - and a little unwisely - into the room. “There can be no alcohol--”
“Was there... no one else available?” His dad coughed mildly. “Someone with perhaps a little more… experience?”
“There’s no one less ginger on call if that's what you're asking.” The twinkle returned to Rose’s eyes and he saw his dad’s scowl growing. “Plus, it’s nice to catch up with Scorp.”
She threw him an amused glance and Scorp nodded circumspectly, adding, “It’s been years.”
“Far too long if you ask me.”
“Plus she’s famous for growing excellent nails. Renowned, even.”
“You did bring me the best Christmas gift, you charmer.”
“We could go for drinks next time,” he said, a smile on his face. “Less bloody.”
“Now, now, why fix what’s not broken?”
The look on his Grandmother and dad’s faces could only be described as stunned, far too horrified to catch the tone of humour.
“You know it’s not nice to tease,” his mum scolded. She was apparently the only one in on the obvious joke and she shook her head, stepping into the room and grabbing his Grandmother’s arm. “You’ll give them both a heart-attack.”
“If there’s a good place to have one,” Scorp pointed out, “this would be it.”
Rose bit down a smile and straightened herself up. “I’ll get him back to you in a few hours. His nerves haven’t settled yet.” Scorp blinked at her and she added, “I mean the literal nerves on your finger. I still need to rebuild your distal phalange.”
“What she means is we need to leave,” his mum said, throwing Scorp a ‘why do you torment them so’ look over her shoulder. “Is it worth staying or --”
“Might be a while and I’m sure you have one hell of a Christmas bash to get back to.” She followed them to the door and offered her a small smile. “Don’t worry Mrs Malfoy, I’ll return him to you in one piece. Back in one piece.”
He could’ve sworn his mum was trying to hide a smile as the door closed behind her.
“You gave cheek to my dad,” he said, blinking with admiration. “You steam-rolled them out. I’d never--”
“Technically, your mum did.”
“You made jokes in front of them.”
“So did you.”
"I'm high," Scorp snorted, letting his head fall down on the pillow. "What's your excuse?"
She was fearless, that's what. Fearless and competent, a Gryffinclaw at her best.
There was a small smile on her face as the door clicked shut behind her and something deliberate and efficient about the way she sat down and took his hand again like no interruption had ever happened.
Clinical and indifferent behind impeccably white gloves.
"I don't encourage helicopter parents."
His eyes focused down on his hand, on the fine tendrils of iridescent magic slipping from her wand, moulding flesh, muscle and bone.
Like a tiny Christmas tree made of light, twirling and twisting and turning over the stump of his finger.
"Flirting," he muttered softly. "You were flirting with me."
"At Hogwarts? Or now?"
There was a pouty sort of rueful smile on her face.
"Are you?"
"Now, that would just be unprofessional, Mr Malfoy," she said sternly. "And while you were terribly cute back at Hogwarts and very, very easy to tease--"
She stopped for a few seconds, eyebrows scrunching.
"Was I?"
"Schhh now. Fingerprint. Tricky business."
Her lips knit together into a pout. Beads of sweat dripped down her forehead and she worked methodically and in silence, weaving layer after layer after layer of bone, flesh and skin. Her voice, low and sure, kept murmuring, her wand twirling in impossibly steady hands.
Scorp rested his head on the pillow and fought sleep, eyes fluttering shut as he fell in and out of slumber, flirting uncertainly with sleep, not wanting to allow it to take over because he'd rather look at her. Blue eyes danced in and out of focus as his brain succumbed under the weight of the happy spells.
At her pouty red mouth.
At her red curls.
At --
"Good morning Mr Malfoy." A sunny voice that sounded nothing like Rose's woke him up. "Merry Christmas!"
Scorp tasted his mouth and lifted his hands to his eyes to rub the sleep away - both hands, he realised.
Ten perfect fingers.
"Oh."
"Healer Weasley does good work - a lot of her family keep accidentally losing random bits. You were lucky."
"Lucky?"
"She was supposed to be going home when you got in." The Medi-Witch threw him an amused look as she opened the curtains. "That's a good friend you got there, Mr Malfoy. Practically had to kick her home."
Oh.
Oh.
The One That Got Away once had now gotten away twice.
Rose was feeling indignant, frankly. What was the point of the universe dangling that tasty snack of a man in front of her just to send her home packing before she could take a bite?
To be fair she had been so tired she wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten home that night. She’d just woken up in bed, dazed and confused and wondering how she’d been lucky enough not to accidentally Floo herself somewhere in Scotland.
Fine, it was a good thing they'd sent her home. In the state she was in she might've done something stupid, like lick him - tempting, but no, she hadn't, she had morals. While loose and sketchy, they still existed.
Kissing Sleeping Beauty had been tempting, though.
No man should be allowed to be that pretty. Far too aristocratic and blonde for her tastes, like he'd never done a hard day's work in his life. His fingers had no calluses to speak of, his nails were perfectly oval and --
Yes, she'd developed a mild fetish with his hands but that was only to be expected - nicest finger she'd ever rebuilt, her magnum opus, really.
Revoltingly perfect DNA, magic to its core - unless you counted the fact that the Malfoy part of him was more inbred than a sandwich, of course. The growing spell had been like conducting a symphony where she'd constantly be surprised at the notes that followed, perfect and lovely in its fleshy essence.
The thought of it still made her insides tighten.
Yes, the teenage crush was back and it had clobbered her on the head with so much force she was still seeing stars. Or Christmas lights, really, it was very hard to miss them - it was like Christmas Spirit had drunk a little too much eggnog and hurled all over the Burrow.
"You're brooding," Al said, taking a seat next to her while humming along to Blue Christmas - appropriate, really. "Don't tell me you're still hung up on Malfoy's fingers."
"Well you're just making it sound dirty," Rose said with a grin, filching the glass of red from his hand and making a very valiant attempt at drowning in it. "And I only wish. Perfect bloody fingers. I want them everywhere."
Al grimaced. "You've mentioned - no less than two hundred times."
"Well, they were."
"What are you going to do about it?"
Rose picked up one of the presents from her pile - soft, carelessly packaged, from Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry - and her red nail tinkered with the tape.
"Torn between doing nothing and doing everything," she said simply. "The second would entail making a complete fool out of myself --"
"Never stopped you before."
Rose let out a dry laugh. "Ha, funny."
"If I knew you'd be this torn up about him I'd never have threatened to hex his sorry arse back then."
"You what?"
Al shrugged. "We all did, really. James was the worst, I think - hung him off the Astronomy tower by his robes. Then was Lily - shocking, I know - who told him if he didn't stop pestering you she'd turn him into a ferret --"
Rose's eyes widened. "You lot thought he was pestering me?!"
"Wasn't he?" He blinked. "Every time we had a test he'd shimmy over to you and mock you and…” At the look on her face, his face scrunched up and asked with horror, “No?"
“No!” Rose felt a very strong urge to laugh in his face. "I think… maybe… maybe we were flirting. I think."
Maybe her sixteen-year-old instincts had been right. Maybe --
She got up to her feet. "I have something I need to do."
"Tell me this has nothing to do with--" here he lowered his voice and he hissed "-- Malfoy's perfect fingers!"
Rose wiped some singing confetti off her hair - each a teeny tiny voice singing along to the Weasley Christmas repertoire (currently Silent Night ) - and grinned. "Of course it doesn't."
"Oh, good."
"It has everything to do with Malfoy's perfect fingers."
Except she didn't lower her voice - rather the contrary - and complete silence befell the Burrow. Freckled faces everywhere turned to look at her and she let out a sniffle. "And if anyone has any problems with that, they can very well shove it."
Apparently, people had a lot of problems with it, and Rose skipped over to the fireplace to escape the backlash, letting out a laugh as she snuck past her dad, placing a kiss on his shoulder - the only bit of his that she could possibly kiss without becoming trapped and brainwashed into hating everything Malfoy.
Fine, she exaggerated - they weren’t that bad. Most of them were giving her slurring displays of support, though she was almost sure James’ ‘Hear hear!’ was unrelated to the topic at hand and Teddy’s ‘Go get him’ possibly implied he thought she was going to hurt Malfoy rather than snogging the twinkly lights out of him.
It was a working plan, but she trusted her own abilities. When in doubt, flashing the twins usually had the effect of turning perfectly sensible men into gaping dum-dums.
If it came to boobing Scorpius Malfoy on the face, then so be it.
When she popped out the other side, everything Weasley in her cringed. Like she was allergic to the place and the place was allergic to her.
All that said, it wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined it - there were no house-elves' heads hanging above the mantelpiece and nothing about the place screamed ‘we fancy exterminating anything whose magical DNA isn’t 99% genetically inherited ailments’.
It was nothing like the Weasley Christmas where everything felt somewhat accidental, a melting pot of Christmas opinions and wishes, colourful paper wrapping and mismatched lights. Here, it was all… manicured. Perfect. Silver and green, almost obsessively thematic: a Winter Forest Wonderland.
Magical snowflakes fell almost half-heartedly from the ceiling, dying out slowly as the magic spell waned. It was still beautiful, decadent and just the tiniest bit sad - a little like the Malfoy family itself.
“Scorp?” she asked, tentatively stepping into the grand fireplace. “Hello?”
Something in the nearby couch shuffled and from the dredges of it emerged what looked a lot like Scorp’s Grandmother - or so Rose thought, she couldn’t be sure.
Her mesh of silver hair was acting in complete disregard of every law of gravity, her mascara had been let loose off its magical constraints and migrated as south as her chin and her designer robes, which had been sharp as a razor even as she brandished a glass around at St Mungo’s were now all… smushed and sad.
“Whadduyouwant?”
One word, garbled almost beyond recognition.
And Rose, who’d been the tiniest bit afraid of Narcissa Malfoy the previous night, realised she’d never be afraid ever again.
Not the tiniest bit, not at all.
“Following up on the finger,” Rose lied calmly. “You want me to get you a cup of tea?”
A dismissive hand and a groaned “Get out” followed and Rose had to do her unholy best not to laugh.
“Where’s Scorp?” Before the woman could reply, Rose continued, taking a purposeful step into the house and ignoring her faint protests. “Nevermind, I’ll find him myself.”
Walking around the place felt like mischief in itself. She kept stumbling on drunk purebloods draped across the most inane of places - she was almost sure the wanker drooling on the staircases lying in a pool of his own vomit was the head of a very prominent ‘No Muggles’ movement.
She snapped a photo just in case.
When she finally stumbled on Scorpius in the library, she found him scowling at a piece of parchment, a series of crumpled balls of parchment spread across the room close to the bin.
She let out a wolf-whistle and a “Damn, that’s a fine finger you got there” and relished the look of complete daftness he sent her.
“What --” He shuffled to put away the parchment he’d been writing on and stood up to his feet. “How... ?”
“Little thing called Floo,” she said, walking into the room, her hand studiously brushing across a nearby table. “Nice place. I really like what you’ve done with the decor, though I was expecting a lot more skulls and rivers of flowing Muggle blood.” When he stared blankly at her, face paling, she clarified, “I'm joking. Did you lose your sense of humour as well as the finger?”
He was still looking at her like a stunned mannequin and Rose rolled her eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m… fine. I was just --” he gestured to the table and blinked, getting up to his feet “-- it’s Christmas. Why aren’t you out there… Christmas-ing?”
Rose crouched down to pick one of the crumpled parchment balls and was delighted when he stepped toward her, a look of abject horror on his face.
"Oh, you don't want me to read this?!"
Took her right back to Seventh Year.
She dodged his hand and skipped around the couch, trying to put some room between them. “‘Dear Rose’,” she read, a pleased flush spreading across her face as she held the parchment away from his grasp. “You were writing to me?”
“No!” Except it sounded a lot like ‘yes’. “Fine, maybe.”
She let herself be caught and pulled the parchment further away, skimming the next few lines as her entire body struggled to keep it away from him. “You were!”
‘Not for the purpose of reattaching fingers, just… dinner. Drinks. Anything.’
The hand tightened around her wrist and he slowly peeled the sheet from her fingers.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her incredulously. “You’re --”
Rose’s heart thrummed against its confines and she was possessed with a sudden urge to laugh.
“-- just… no, really, what are you doing here?”
Laugh because she really hadn’t thought this through. The answer to that question was she had no idea.
Other than her breasts plan, of course, but that was the back-up plan.
The breast-up plan.
“I came to check on you.” Solid start. “Follow up on the finger. Maybe confiscate all the blades in the house, not sure yet. Do you feel an urge to chop off any other digits in the foreseeable future?” His fingers tightened around her wrist and she closed the distance between them. “Do you think you could maybe let go of me now?”
He did just that and Rose’s hand grasped his before he could slip away - still capitalising off the excuse that checking his finger gave her to hold his hand. She shook her head and added, “Some of my best work - completely wasted on you.”
“Do you check up on all your patients?”
His voice was quiet and the look he sent her would’ve melted treacle.
“Not at all. Just the really fit ones,” she said, forehead scrunching a little. Embarrassment took over and her eyes went back to his finger. “Open and close your hand for me?”
He followed orders wordlessly and continued his attack: “You’re here to see me on Christmas day instead of being home with your family?”
It did sound a little nutty.
“Yes. I’m an excellent Healer, go the extra mile and all that.”
He stared blankly at her, almost disappointed and Rose’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Fine. You mentioned drinks.” Rose slowly let go of his hand. “I thought maybe we could pin the date down… while the iron’s still hot… rather than waiting another seven years and it fizzling into nothing?”
There was the longest pause. We’re talking maybe seconds, but to her it felt like an eternity, a lifetime crammed into that tiny moment before his fingers opened and closed around her own.
Following instructions and playing it by ear, it seemed.
“Or,” he said quietly, not meeting her eye, “we could maybe not wait at all.”
Her heart kept doing the oddest things, like beating too hard or not beating at all - now it was doing this weird thing where it kept skipping beats.
“Sounds promising. What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” he said, finally looking her in the eye. “I think we can find a bottle and have a drink right now .”
Rose was aware her everything must be blushing - she could feel her ears heating up with joy and the smallest bit of embarrassment. The good kind of embarrassment, warm, tiny embers of something new and unknown. She hadn't felt it in years really. Her dating life in the last was fraught with certainty and a lot of logic and this…
This sent her right back to when she hadn't been certain. When every look, every word from him had been an excuse to overthink and romanticise.
“Shouldn’t you be with the people you love and cherish?” she asked.
He snorted. “I’m assuming you saw the house?” he asked, clearly referring to the people draped over multiple surfaces. “Come to think of it, maybe we can’t find a bottle, they probably drank it all.”
“I always figured these would be dignified affairs, not… this,” Rose commented offhandedly as they walked out of the library. “More dress robes less… puke in the fancy vase.”
A small smile grew on his face. “That’s today. Christmas Eve was all about pure-blooded unrestrained fun." When she sent him a questioning look, he clarified, "A lot of bad-mouthing the establishment and being offended and mourning the good old days. Mostly the elder generation, the younger purebloods are several shades of daft. Some not at all, some give Uncle Goyle a run for his money. Anyway, Christmas Day is… Labour Day, really. Hard work. Lot of relationship maintenance and establishing contacts and air-kissing and --”
At the word kissing her heart thumped harder in her chest.
Thump, thump, thump.
Scorp bit down on his lower lip, eyes darkening slightly. “-- so… probably no liquor. I could maybe enchant some into existence but --” He kept on walking. Her fingers entwined with his and he came to a halt, looking down at their entwined hands and then at her.
Rose heard her voice coming out of her mouth without any intervention from her brain. “I don’t suppose you have mistletoe somewhere?”
He blinked. “Mistletoe.”
“Mistletoe.” Her mouth curled into a smile. “The kind you have to kiss under.”
“I’m sure we could find some. Is it a requirement?”
“More of an excuse.”
“An excuse to kiss,” he repeated, nodding gravely. “Do we need one, you think?”
She rolled her eyes. “I would smash you against a wall and snog you right now, but it might feel --”
“Feel?”
“Odd? I mean, we haven’t even… dated. Or chatted, really. I grew you a finger, for Merlin’s sake, that’s not exactly the sexiest --”
The voice died in her throat and he reeled her in until she was flush against him, hands pressed against his chest. “Isn’t it the sexiest thing?”
Thump, thump, motherfucking, thump.
“Is it?”
“I could’ve sworn it was. Mostly because it was you fixing my finger.”
The half-hearted snowfall coming from the ceiling was falling over them now, almost thematically and the singing confetti trapped in her hair hummed a quiet All I Want For Christmas Is You.
A shimmering flake fell on his lashes and Rose’s hands tightened into fists at his chest. She stepped to the very tip of her toes, her heart thump, thump, thumping away with wild abandonment as his head dipped down until his mouth melded against hers, arms wrapping themselves around her to pull her closer and kiss her with all the calm of a completely controlled twenty-five year old.
That was of course before Rose tugged at his shirt and sent them tumbling down an eighteen-year-old snog - desperate and just a little sloppy.
Fine, not a little, downright sloppy, the sort of sloppy that seemed to be directly wired to everything south her waist. Desperate like they needed it, soft like they meant it, a more affectionate stroke of his hand against her cheek sending her overwhelmed heart into complete shambles.
It was too much and Rose used her tether on his shirt to push him away, wide eyes meeting his. “You can’t…”
But his mouth was on hers again and his fingers, those perfect fingers were brushing through her hair and he was kissing her cheek and her forehead and her neck and --
“Scorp… ”
“Is that a ‘stop’?” He stopped and looked down at her for a second as she shook her head. “No?”
Rose Weasley, who was the self-proclaimed Bravest Person She Knew, asked, “Isn’t it too much? For you?”
“Not at all.”
“Because I think you should know, I liked you. A lot.”
Technically that was a lie, mostly the tense. She was brave, but not insane.
“At Hogwarts.” He kissed her again and she moaned into his mouth.
“No, now,” she clarified, words struggling to be kept inside even as she pushed them out - brave and insane, apparently. “Possibly too much in a pent-up, mental way that makes absolutely no sense. I’m invested.”
She expected him to run for the hills and instead his mouth curled into a grin and he rested his forehead against hers. “Oh, thank Merlin.”
“Oh?”
“Because I am too.”
And then she kissed him, like she meant it far too much to be reasonable - and he let her.
And then he kissed her and she let him.
And at one point they were kissing each other and there was no reason anywhere and no one to blame because honestly, the calm had lasted a whole seven years - maybe more - and the storm had finally arrived.
Everyone knows when maelstrom rages, you have to find cover. They did just so, not so quietly locking the library door behind them to keep any meandering hungover purebloods out - especially those of a grandmotherly persuasion.
All the while, snowflakes kept falling on them and the teeny carolling confetti kept singing softly.
“I have to go back to my loving family,” Rose said, giving her bra a tug to untuck it from under his naked back. “And you need to tosh up.”
His hand reached out to pull her back in but there wasn’t a stitch of clothing for him to use as a hook. Instead, he sat up and wrapped his arm around her waist.
“You think the nakedness might put them off the air-kissing?” He let out a snort. “Might work out in my favour.”
“Seriously,” she said sternly, placing a sedate kiss on his temple. “Reality awaits. I have smiles to dole out in exchange for gifts I never asked for. I unwrapped an enchanted tiny violin that kept hovering over my shoulder and playing the saddest tune - I still need to figure out who gave it to me.”
Scorp wanted to ask if in this Reality she’d maybe want to go for that drink. If maybe, just maybe they could see each other again tomorrow or the day after - preferably both.
Instead, he asked, “No note on the tiny violin?”
And Rose said, “None at all. I’m betting Al, though - he looked far too pleased with himself all night.”
Clothes covered everything in sight - buggering clothes, he’d never quite hated the sartorial world quite so much - and they left the library together, hand in hand. She kissed him goodbye under the highly apoplectic gaze of his Grandmother in a way that didn’t feel like goodbye at all.
If anything, that was a hello kiss.
Just when he was about to turn away and spend the next couple of hours over-analyzing every word out of her mouth, there were steps coming out of the fireplace and arms wrapped around his waist from behind. “Wednesday night. Dinner.”
“Not before?”
“Work,” she said, nodding gravely. “Unless you want to show up with another severed finger I say we keep you separate from my place of employment. That and my family - I have some begging, threatening and maybe crying to do before we cross that bridge.”
He nodded back, the logic of that statement absolutely undebatable. “I’ll owl you.”
“I’ll owl so you don’t spend five hours littering the library.”
A kiss was pressed on his back and she left, throwing one last “See you soon, Mrs Malfoy” that was the verbal equivalent of stabbing a knife into his ageing Grandmother's heart.
When he went back to the library he found a small handful of singing confetti on the couch, softly humming the last bars of Michael Bublé’s Don’t Want a Lot For Christmas.
Which was funny, because he’d gotten everything he wanted - and a few things he had no idea he needed.
The singing confetti wasn’t just on the couch apparently - for days he kept finding bits of it stuck in his hair, in his clothes, on his skin, singing an endless stream of Christmas carols in their teeny tiny voices.
A little bit of Christmas joy that lasted right until she owled him and the envelope exploded with some more confetti, keeping him comfortably in Christmas songs and full of her until Wednesday.
A friendly reminder that, while Christmas was gone, she wasn’t - and, if the owls they’d been exchanging were anything to go on, she had absolutely no intention of going anywhere.