1. Bend and Break

Author's Note: The title of this story is a song by Kelly Clarkson, this chapter title is a song by Keane and I also have a slightly concealed My Chemical Romance hint in the first couple of paragraphs. I don't own these, and I don't own Harry Potter either. Also... Scorpius calls Rose 'Red', a nickname that I'm sure I stole from somewhere else. Not sure though. xD

A quick word to start us off: many of my dates and ages may not be correct, but hopefully I've manipulated them realistically enough to make them seem plausible. Roxanne (17) is the younger child of Fred and Angelina, canon by HP Lexicon; Louis (17) is the youngest child and only son of Bill and Fleur, also canon; and Rebecca (11) is the daughter of Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott. She, however, is not canon- I made her up myself.

They are all in Gryffindor except for Scorpius, who is in Ravenclaw. If I do something stupid and mention the wrong house for someone, please tell me. xD I don't want to confuse anyone.

If you have any questions you need to ask, please feel free to do so, along with comments, corrections (I don't have a beta) and reviews. (: I will try to answer any reviews I get, because I love the idea of people reading my work and enjoying what I write.

Rose watched the bland, endlessly indistinctive scenery flash past through the rattling glass pane of her Hogwarts Express compartment window. She leaned her head tiredly against the glass, stifling a yawn and closing her blue eyes as she attempted to ignore the chaos around her. Fit into the reasonably snug compartment was her younger brother, Hugo; her cousins, Lily and James; little first year Rebecca Longbottom; and Hugo's owl, Yaron, who had an awful habit of screaming at the top of his teeny owl lungs. As if to add to all of this noise, James had brought along his Wizard Wireless radio, and was playing My Chemical Love Potion at full volume. Rose squeezed her eyes shut tighter, shifting her body away from the sharp corner of her brother's school trunk that was pressing into her from the seat beside her as best she could.

Not only was the space over-crowded with people, but school trunks were squashed positively everywhere. Hugo's, Lily's, James', Rebecca's, her own and Yaron's cage took up enough room, but Roxanne, Louis and Albus had also piled their luggage in the compartment. Luckily for them, they got to sit elsewhere. Head Girl Roxanne and Prefect Albus had a compartment to share with the rest of the student staff, and Gryffindor Quidditch Captain Louis had escaped into one of his many groups of friends' compartment.

"Can you turn the music down?" Rose burst out suddenly, blinking her eyes open in annoyance, her voice tight. She didn't get an answer. "Can you turn the music down, please?"

Rebecca, who sat playing cards with Hugo, glanced at Rose. Rose's irritated voice conveniently hadn't floated into James' eardrums yet, however, so she aimed a sharp kick to the ankle of her cousin. James – who had been sitting opposite Rose, eyes closed, as his head nodded to the music – started slightly, looking at her and mouthing snappishly, "What?!"

Sighing irritably and muttering something only partially coherent about 'fuck' and 'why bother', Rose stood and clambered over her huge family's various items of luggage until she got to the compartment door. Shaking a foil Chocolate Frog wrapping off of her shoe, she yanked on the door and made her exit, slamming it behind her. A group of first years loitering in the lengthy train corridor went silent and stared until Rose backed off to the very end of the carriage. As a rule, the Potter-Weasley family always got a compartment in the last car of the train. If they happened to be late, a compartment was almost always left for them. James and Louis were good at bullying their way into getting what they wanted; and the back car was what they wanted because of the big window at the very end of the train.

Rose went to the window, slightly disappointed to find identical views to the ones seen from her compartment. She'd made this journey more than twelve times in her sixteen years, but it never got any more interesting.

Until now.

Rose felt something small and round hit her quite sharply in the back of the head. "Shit!" Lifting her hand, she winced in pain and embarrassment as she spun around. A figure stood, leaning against one of the compartment walls. Light blond hair curled against his forehead, beneath which sat two pale, grey eyes, shining with mischievous delight. His thin, wide lips were twitched up into a smirk before he opened them, raising a hand, to say, "Howdy there, Red." In the hand that lingered by his waist was a packet of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. Rose glanced down at the floor to pinpoint the bean that had assaulted her. It was green.

"I don't like the green ones," Scorpius Malfoy said, as if in explanation.

Rose stared at him in silence for a moment, before cracking a smile. He grinned back, accepting the slap on the arm that he was given once she approached him. "That fucking hurt, Malfoy," she jokingly complained. "Those barf-flavoured beans are lethal."

"I wouldn't know," he replied, chuckling slightly and scratching the back of his head absentmindedly.

"Want me to show you?"

"I'm alright, thanks."

Rose and Scorpius had quite a complicated and difficult relationship. Due to the prejudices of both families, they couldn't be friends, per say. Rose had expected to attend Hogwarts and fully despise Scorpius thanks to the stories that she had heard from her grudge-holding father, so the truth about the boy had been quite a shock. Scorpius was in Ravenclaw and, thus, incredibly intelligent. He was relatively quiet and didn't have a lot of friends, but that was to be expected. Everybody who had magical parents – and, generally, even those who didn't – knew the story of the long-time enmity between villain Draco Malfoy and hero Harry Potter. Scorpius was treated warily by all who met him on default and his sarcastic nature and hard-to-impress personality didn't particularly help matters.

Fortunately – or... unfortunately, depending on whose side you lay – Rose herself was quite a difficult person to get along with. She was friendly and good-hearted, sure, but she was a perpetual know-it-all and had quite a spiteful side to her. Her personality and keen thirst for knowledge clashed with Scorpius in the very first class they had together, because he was not so dissimilar. In their younger years they disliked one another, but as Rose grew older she found herself appreciating the challenge. Who would she war against in Potions or verbally spar with in Charms but Scorpius? He understood her sense of humour and she somewhat got his cynical outlook on the world, and they clicked. For all their rivalry, they clicked.

Of course, James despised him. The boys – in different years and houses – had virtually no reason to cross one another's paths except for during Quidditch games. Apparently, that small window of opportunity was all they needed to continuously antagonize one another. James' violent and nasty traits were brought out by Scorpius, who seemed to get a malicious thrill from goading him. Though they had never been in a physical – or magical – fight with each other officially, the classes knew that they were in for some source of gossip whenever fate brought James Potter and Scorpius Malfoy within close proximity of one another.

Apart from Rose and James, the rest of the Potters and Weasleys felt various levels of indifference toward Scorpius. Albus felt wary and a little frightened of him (and hated being around him with James because it almost always led to James in a foul mood), but was otherwise uncaring. Louis knew who he was from Quidditch but mostly ignored him, and Roxanne had too much on her plate to worry about keeping up with the family tradition of hating a Malfoy. Hugo looked to him in mild disdain, but little Lily had actually harboured a crush on Scorpius before her uncle had snappishly let her know who he was. Needless to say, she'd quickly moved on to liking someone in Gryffindor.

Rose's slightly unwilling fondness for Scorpius, however, had lingered on. She didn't really know what to do with it but, against the will of her family and most likely his, the two had formed a shaky almost-friendship. He annoyed her like no one else a lot of the time, but she couldn't think of anyone who made her laugh quite as much as he did. After a couple of months away in a solely Weasley-Potter environment, Rose found herself quite pleased to have someone a bit different around.

"So, I was thinking," Scorpius said, shifting from his casual position against the wall and forcing his slightly lanky frame into a straight standing position, "I spent way too many of the Hogsmeade trips last year alone, in my dorm, reading Quidditch mags and basically dying a slow and very painful death." Rose chuckled, and he went on. "So. Since you clearly have no friends either-"

Rose was halfway through an indignant snort when someone caught her attention behind Scorpius. Roxanne – Rose's cousin and Hogwarts' Head Girl – called her name and waved a hand. "Rosie! I come with news of Noel Hunter!" Noel Hunter was a rather fetchingly handsome wizard that had graduated Hogwarts the year before with fervent promises to return as soon as possible. He was very popular with the females of the school. Sidestepping Scorpius with a hand motion meaning 'hang on just a sec', Rose gave her full attention to Roxanne.

"So, apparently," Roxanne said, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder. "He wants to be a Muggle Studies professor so he's coming back this year to work as a librarian assistant in the forbidden section." She grinned. "I might just find myself becoming a bit of a bookworm this year." Rose laughed, thinking back to Noel. He'd been fantastically intelligent, yet surprisingly easy to talk to; she had been fifteen at the time and him seventeen, but they'd gotten on like a house on fire whenever they'd bumped into one another at the library or in Hogsmeade. Rose had even developed quite a crush on him. Unfortunately for her, he seemed to get along with all the other girls at Hogwarts just as well as he did with her.

Roxanne led Rose back to their compartment, changing the subject to chat animatedly about her Head Girl duties, and it was only when she reached the compartment door that Rose remembered Scorpius. She turned back apologetically, but her efforts were wasted. He was gone.