The door jingles behind me as I close it. Others, like Gilda, prefer the busy bustle of the more frequented shops. But I've always been comforted by the tiny library at the end of the street. True, it's not very complete and the number of volumes is limited, but it's quiet and warm and dry and deserted.

And in this kind of rain, it's exactly what I need.

The librarian greets me quietly as I drop off my wand in the front. I like the honor code they keep.

The backroom is usually empty. People don't come in here very much and it's a little bit dusty. To be perfectly honest, it gives one the feeling of being watched, but I still take some small comfort in the lack of noise.

But today it's not empty. And though it's only one extra person, I think I'd feel better in a crowd.

"Stalking, Rose?" he asks, not looking up from his parchment. A strand of his blond hair falls over his nose.

"What are you doing here?" I shoot back, feeling caught somewhere between inquisitive and reproachful.

"Research. You?"

"Studying."

"Oh."

I stare at him for a while after that. I keep expecting him to say something else. Maybe some small talk or some pleasantries to exchange, an insult, even. But he just sits there, hunched over the table, his quill scratching quietly against the slightly wrinkled parchment.

So I sit down. And I pull out a book. And I write.

Mostly, it's just notes. Basic dates, events, names of people that sound important. I do a little background research on them, sometimes venturing past the textbook assigned. Every twelve notes or so I find something interesting and write it down. I use red ink for those, but the rest are black.

But when I look down at the parchment, the words are lopsided. Some words are larger than others, some are all the same size but seem to be following a winding path. It's coherent, but it's not very organized.

Had I even been looking at my paper?

"Can… can we talk?"

He looks up, surprise pulling up his eyebrows and dropping his mouth into a gape. He shakes it off and stammers, "Y-yeah. Er, about… us?"

"Not us. We're not really an us. About what… what happened."

"…Sure. What about it?"

"Well," I begin, laying my quill gingerly on the table, "I want this out of the way. And you need to understand why I was, and am, upset."

"Well, my grandfather sort of..… Well, in any case, I think I understand."

"No," I say simply.

He looks up sharply as if about to say, "huh?"

And for some reason, his lack of understanding feels insulting.

"I've been called worse, and scarier things have happened to me. What upset me… was that you weren't there."

"How was I not there? I was next to you."

"Next to me," I say, gathering my books into my bag as I stand, "but not there. I have to go."

With a quick whip of his wand, the door closes and locks with a defined click. He sits on the edge of his chair and looks at me, as if waiting for me to say something scolding or rude. But I just turn the rest of my body to face him, stubbornly rooted on spot, hand defiantly glued to the doorknob.

"Sit," Scorpius says, pointing to the chair. It isn't an offer or suggestion.

"I'm fine wh—"

"Sit," he says again, with an air of finality so great that it scares me to disobey him. I sit. "Talk."

"What?"

"You said that we needed to talk. What do you mean I wasn't there?"

I cross my arms and lean back into the chair, torn between my defensive need to resist and the plain truth of his words. I was the one who wanted to talk and I'm the one who brought all of this discomfort on myself.

But saying what I actually feel out loud makes me feel so embarrassed and upset that my heart pounds fast. I try swallow, but it feels like something very large and sharp is caught in my throat.

"Rose. What did you mean?"

I take a shaky breath and say, "I mean that you did nothing at all… nothing. And I was just waiting for some sign of where you were or what was happening, but you just disappeared with no damn trace and I was the one who had to deal with it."

"You wouldn't understand, Rose."

"What could I possibly not understand?" I shriek. Remembering that we're in a library, I drop my voice. "Lucius, he said everything and then he— he…" I can't find a comfortable way to say it. It just doesn't sound right coming out of my mouth, and it's sort of toxic tasting, heavy.

"I know," he says softly. "I do. And I understand why you're angry. But we're coming from different places and you wouldn't get it."

"Try me," I counter, my voice hoarse from screaming.

The librarian says something scolding through the door, but she's muted by the distance between us and all the of paper absorbing her words.

Scorpius hangs his head with a loaded sigh, his hands knotting together behind his neck.

I quell a fleeting yet powerful urge to touch his knee in comfort.

He looks up and his lips curl into a sickly impression of a smile. The only thing I can compare it to is the face of someone about to cry in fury.

"There's some things you should know about my grandfather," Scorpius says, his fist balled. "He thinks differently than decent wizards do. What he sees isn't a free world or peace or shit like that. And Muggleborns, even halfbloods, to him, aren't increasing the wizarding population… but diluting magic. My grandfather was and will always think like a Death Eater."

A long chill blossoms through me and I suppress a shudder.

"My father spent a long time alone, completely isolated… hidden, I think. He was never direct about it, but I think he ran and hid. My grandfather scares him. More than he scares me. The war was sort of... traumatic for Dad. After it was over, he says Lucius kept rambling on and on about "finding a new plan", "recouping ", "making smaller strikes", just muttering and muttering, like he was insane. So, really, my dad isn't the person you met. I learned that after what happened. He's terrified of his father and ashamed of himself." Scorpius looks at me with a haunted sort of stare. "Should I stop?"

"No," I say, barely above a whisper, having a hard time find a voice to speak with.

"This is more than just what's between our families, Rose. There's no tension for him because he has no fucking restraint. To him," he hisses, "he saw you as an insult, as my own disrespectful 'fuck you'."

"Regardless, you could have at least talked to me afterwards. Something. Hell, anything."

He lets out two dark laughs and nothing more.

"You're overestimating my bravery," says Scorpius. "He already hated me. And then he met you. You put me in a lot of danger."

"So, essentially, you were a coward," I summarize.

"Basically."

"So what I've been thinking is dead on. That's encouraging," I spit.

He takes his wand out and waves it, gently this time. The door unlocks and creaks open a bit. After a few seconds of staring at the exit, I look back at him.

"You can go if you want to."

I do. Every instinct is telling to bolt through that door and not waste any time my looking back. But when I look back at him, I can see the regret. He missed me. He still does.

I've missed him too.

"No," I say. His head snaps up, his eyebrows rise. Clearly, this wasn't the reaction he was expecting. "Let's… walk."

"Where?"

"Shit, I does it matter?…Er, the side streets. No one uses the side streets. Do you have an umbrella?"

"No. Do you?" he asks, casting a worried glance at his reflection on the rain-warped windowpane. Though he'd never admit it, he hates getting his hair wet because it makes him look a bit bald. I stifle a laugh.

"No."

The side streets are a blinding contrast to the cheery windows and signs of Diagon Alley, which in the rain is charming at its worst. But the side streets are painful. There are still some burned doors and shattered windows, houses so broken and unrecognizable that one can hardly imagine a time when they were anything more than a collection of tatters. Mum says that they were forgotten like this because the Ministry wouldn't put the money into fixing them.

But to me, I guess I see them as scars of I time I don't really understand.

I stop in front of a house that might have been beautiful at one time or another. I hear Scorpius' foot steps behind me and they come to a stop. He's close enough for me to feel a faint human sort of warmth on my hand. For some reason, I have the urge to stop calling him Malfoy, but it's an impulsive thought and Grangers aren't impulsive beings.

The curtains behind the spider webbed glass flutters a bit in the wind and some of the rain leaves darker spots on the fabric.

"Why did you leave?" I hear myself say, sounding very sad.

Scorpius puffs out his cheeks and runs a frustrated hand through his now translucent hair.

"Shit, Rose. I thought you of all people would have known."

"You're mistaken," I say, crossing my arms, turning to look at him. To my slight surprise, he looks a bit sad too.

"Your Mum works in the high-ups of Prophet… Every wizarding family in the country has a grudge against my family for one reason or another. Staying wasn't worth the risk. We only came back this year because we thought it had quieted down, but—"

"It never even got out." I adjust the bag hanging on my shoulder. It presses down on the bone in a painful sort of way. "Mum doesn't like messing with the peace. Where did even you go?"

"Switzerland," he says, his voice flat. It's warning. He doesn't want to go into it.

The wind blows faster and the rain falls harder and all I can really think of is how strange things can be. The details that could wind themselves into the statement don't do so. It's just the strangeness of life that sits heavy in my thoughts, and such a flat thought is a bit soothing.

Not just because it's brief, but because it's true as well.

"Do you hate me, Malfoy?"

"Do you hate me?" he counters, looking up at the apartments above the once-fancy house, sort of grimacing against the rain.

"I used to think so." I say, staring at the rubble, feeling a bit disconnected and gloomy. "Hating you made things…"

"Easier," he finishes, as if he knows and has been through every second of the last three years with me.

I nod. And something comes over me because I feel like he understands.

"But now, I don't think hate is the right word. Not really. It's confusing. Because I'm still really hurt by your cowardice and lack of care at on that day, but your being back has reminded me that you aren't the horrible person I convinced myself you were. …And things are always a little more complicated than I expect them to be."

The old house howls in the wind. Scorpius wipes away some of the water on his face.

"I am insulted by you," Scorpius says. "Calling me Malfoy, not talking to me, taking every chance you can to insult me… I suppose all this is fair in some way or another. But I don't like it."

"You're the one who abandoned me," I point out, a bit more playfully this time.

"Yes, but it isn't like it's all a simple matter. And you could have just as easily talked to me and sorted all this out months ago, instead taking on a personal mission to be as bitchy as possible."

I laugh in shock, placing a hand to my chest in semi-offence.

"No to mention the fact that I saved your arse twice without much gratitude," Scorpius continues.

"I said thank you!"

"Sure, after having to Crucio you pride into submission."

"It was still an apology."

"Hardly," he says, blinking fast. The rain keeps pouring on, and eventually Scorpuis' hair is so wet that it looks positively invisible. I stifle another laugh but a large grin still worms its way out of my control. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," I say, still trying to rein in that smile, "funny thought is all."

"Oh."

"By the way," I say, "thank you, well, proper thank you, for saving me both on the pitch and on the lawn. I'd be in a really bad spot if you didn't so… thank you."

"…So you don't hate me anymore…?" says Scorpius, with all the caution of a skittish bird, watching my eyes as if he'd be ready to run at any sign of aggression.

I walk again. He follows. Most of the houses on this street are very much like the old, broken-windowed, curtained house. But some are still standing, though blemished with burn marks and slightly worse for wear.

"No… I guess I don't hate you. Mind you, I'm still bloody furious. I understand your situation, but it doesn't change what happened."

"Angry… but not hate. So you must like me somewhat."

"Still not sure about that."

"Friends?" he asks. I look up at his eyes and recognize the same playful hope that he used when trying to get me on the bicycle.

I snort. "Definitely not friends. Blimey, it's cold. Fancy a butterbeer, Scorpius?"

His face breaks into one of the largest grins I've ever seen on him. It looks much nicer on him than a frown does.

"Sure I do, Weasley."