Title: 28 Days

Pairings: Rose/Scorpius, Draco/Hermione, Albus S.P/OC

Rating: M for eventual smut, language and adult content.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters within it.

Fully compliant with DH-epilogue, but not entirely cannon with The Cursed Child... Although I will not be going against it per se (I've tried to keep their personalities relatively similar), I won't be making any direct ties or mention to the events that supposedly happened. Bits and pieces have been taken from it, though.

Happy reading! :)


"It could be wrong, couldn't it?"

The voice of Ali Longbottom sounded meekly hopeful at best. The brunette's hazel orbs attempted to lock together with Rose's blue ones; her formerly horrified expression now resting only blank and emotionless. The two friends stared idly into a half-filled cauldron sitting within their empty dormitory, its bubbling content illuminating a shade of bright fuchsia. A dreaded message neither girls had fully prepared themselves for.

"It's not wrong." Rose Weasley did her damndest to choke out moderately stable words, the task proving harder than originally anticipated. She bit back warm tears, pushing down an ever-present urge to spew illness across the orange rug beneath her bed.

"Maybe we didn't add enough Gurdyroot to the potion?" Ali suggested a bit more hopefully. "It says here; we were supposed to finely chop it before adding th – "

"I'm fucked. Absolutely and utterly fucked."

Ali's hopefulness went ignored completely.

Rose finally glanced up to meet the gaze of her best friend who sat nearby on an opposing twin-sized bed, wishing she was instead the one giving out an empathetic and pitying grimace to Ali, versus the other way around. Not that Alice Augusta Longbottom would ever find herself entangled within such a horrible predicament. She surely wouldn't even dream of it. No, only Rose's questionable decision-making skills and bad luck could have ended anyone up in such a bloody disaster.

And what a disaster it was.

The time was still early, the grandfather clock within their empty dormitory not yet reading past ten in the morning.

Ali and Rose's other two roommates were likely halfway to Hogsmeade already, spending the abnormally warm autumn Saturday on a day trip to the small wizarding village, as was so incredibly characteristic for the group of Gryffindor girls to do together. Rose had feigned a stomach ache (which was proving to be less and less of a lie as the morning went on) when Dominique had asked why she wasn't going on that day's particular excursion. Ali hurriedly stated she would graciously stay behind also – to keep the redhead company– being used as her own personal excuse. Not particularly a lie either, though still blatantly untruthful via omission of one key detail...

The brewing and usage of a pregnancy test potion.

"You don't know that!" Ali argued, soon coming to sit on Rose's bed with her arms wrapped around the redhead before she had a moment's notice to object. "My mum once told me her test turned this disgusting green color with me. She thought since green was closest to blue, it naturally meant negative, right? She didn't find out until almost a month later at St Mungo's –"

"It's bloody pink!" Rose sobbed weakly, caving finally and leaning into Ali's comforting embrace. "Not red, not orange… or even pinkish-purple. Bright fucking pink, Ali! The exact shade that's on the bloody instructions, right next to the potion's ingredient list."

"But I'm just saying, it's not always right –"

"Of course it's right!" Rose cried softly, letting the warm tears roll down and away from her wet eyes. "Unless you have another logical explanation for why I woke up yesterday puking my brains out… and feel physically ill whenever I smell eggs at breakfast time. Please, clarify it for me. Because honestly, there's only one explanation which makes any sense right now."

Ali supplied kindly, "I told you already! All the kitchen house-elves have been going barmy ever since Tinsley passed away last month. My pork roast yesterday tasted like shoe leather –"

Rose interjected sarcastically, "Oh right, and I suppose me being five days late for my period is also fault of the house elves downstairs, now is it?"

"Five days is normal!" Ali and Rose both knew her objecting words were said only as comforting falsehoods. "That's nothing. I've skipped an entire month before! You're not even a full week late yet... it could just be stress."

"Except violent nausea plus a positive pregnancy test does NOT add up to only being a bit 'stressed out,' Ali. Merlin's beard, I'm not even stressed! Not really." Rose put a hand up to her pounding forehead, "At least I wasn't until now."

Ali continued her denial and struggled attempts to make Rose feel better, "We could have brewed the test wrong, you know... Besides, you'd only be what? Three weeks along, at most? People usually don't have morning sickness that early on. It could be something else entirely. Maybe your hormones are just wacky this month?"

"Of course they are! Some microscopic little-unwelcomed parasite is infiltrating within my should-be-barren womb –"

"I think the stomach flu's going around, too. It could be that."

Rose completely ignored the idea, continuing with her frantic rant. "I don't know why I'm so surprised in the first place. Shite, it doesn't take a bloody genius! Apparently, that lecture over our 'changing bodies' Madam Pomfrey gave out during third-year was completely wasted on us both!"

"I think it was wasted on everybody, to be honest with you."

Rose paused to take a saddened breath. "Look, thanks for trying, but we don't have to pretend there's any way around this sodding catastrophe. I'm pregnant. Seventeen, single, and knocked up by a guy I'm not even dating. How incredibly charming my life has become… And to think – I thought Roxy making Head Girl over me was the worst thing to happen this year."

Ali's face fell, sighing with defeat. They both knew the truth, despite how dreadful it was to admit aloud. It was staring them straight in the face through the form of a bubbling, pink, pregnancy test potion.

"Gods, Rose. Why did you not just use the contraceptive charm?"

Ali vocalized her obvious question once more, having already been inquired back when Rose first mentioned her initial suspicion, only three days earlier. Rose had then divulged a second, minor, supporting detail to the story – having been left out during its original telling – of them not having used any type of precautions during said incident. Like any normal and intelligent seventeen-year-old witch or wizard would have done.

"Blimey, like I said before! It was Halloween," Rose let out an exasperated groan, running a hand through the messy mop of red curls atop her head. "We were both so drunk off that firewhisky Al was passing out in the Slytherin common room. Dominique ditched me AGAIN to go make out with Connor Finnegan. Merlin knows, that girl should be the one in this predicament instead of me... And we somehow ended up alone in his dorm –"

"Which you know better than anyone is no longer even connected to the Slytherin common room! So you were obviously sober enough to walk all that way up there with him... The head boy's dorm is quite literally across the entire bloody castle."

"Alright, so?" Rose quipped. "We just… forgot I guess."

"Forgot". It was a white lie, but not one particularly worth amending.

Rose had already since decided against telling her friend the very minor and unimportant detail of how they did, in fact, use the contraceptive charm that night. Instead, it being the following morning where neglect had come into play; featuring an impromptu shower and both their wands being forgotten on the adjacent bedroom floor.

That would also mean admitting to, not only slipping up and breaking her vow of never again sleeping with him anymore but also managing to do so without the usage of any intoxicating substances as aid. After all, the unmentionable four other times it had happened was at the hands of loneliness and a bit too much Odgen's Firewhisky. Rose was unsure which exact strain of insanity had possessed over her long enough to assume it a smart idea to climb into the shower that one infamous morning-after. One-hundred percent sober, one-hundred percent reckless impulse.

She hardly wanted to admit that to herself, nonetheless somebody else. Even if Ali was her closest friend which she told everything to, back since the pair had practically been in diapers. It was a bit much for anyone to process fully. Even herself.

After all – the brainy Slytherin head boy and prankster Gryffindor quidditch-star were hardly friends. Let alone anything more outside of classroom structure. Or so anyone would think.

It was just, at times, Rose found herself in certain compromising positions, with far too much liquid-libation flowing within her blood, climbing into the bed of Scorpius Malfoy. Slytherin's biggest and most eligible male swot, who had managed to snag himself the title of head boy that year, despite being a branch to one of the most ill-respected and tainted family trees in wizarding Britain. Annoyingly handsome, curiously shy, and sodding brilliant to boot. Acquaintances by association they had always been. Nothing more. Just how things were supposed to be.

Life seemed to have other plans.

"When are you gonna tell him?"

"Ideally, never. I could do the rest of my life without having that painfully awkward of a conversation."

"He has no idea?"

Rose shook her head. "No, he doesn't have a clue. Although, I suppose he'll find out soon enough... I mean, eventually, " she concluded with dread. "I'll have to suck up my pride and get money from him, for a termination draught. I won't have enough just by myself. It's nearly three-hundred galleons at most Apothecary shops. Maybe one-hundred fifty if I go to that shady one down in Knockturn Alley –"

"So you were completely serious then? When you said, you wouldn't even consider keeping it. You know, there's other options besides just inducing a miscarriage –"

"Of course I was serious!" she closed her eyes for a moment, trying to push down the waves of tears threatening to creep up once more. "Ali, I can't keep this baby...You know that as well as I do. We're seventeen for Merlin's sake; we can barely bloody apparate ourselves, let alone be responsible for another human life!"

"But –"

"And we're not married – fucking hell, not even dating – let alone prepared to raise our unwanted, bastard child, together. In some tossed up family where both sets of grandparents hate it. No one even knows about us ever…. happening those few times, other than you. My parents would quite literally murder me, bring me back to life, only to have me to watch them kill him. And bloody hell! Don't even get me started about what the Daily Prophet would publish. They'd have a field day."

"I suppose you're right about that part."

"There's hardly any option here. I'm not going to end up some bleeding statistic with a miserable life, raising the next heir to a death-eater fortune. I can't do it. I won't."

Ali smiled, maintaining the same overly kind and understanding expression Rose swore her best friend would give out regardless, even if she'd just confessed to murdering someone. "Alright. As long as it's what you actually want. You do have options. Even if they aren't the most pleasant seeming right now. I'll support you no matter what, Rose."

"You'd be the only one," she choked out. "I want this gone, forever. To never think about this monumental mistake ever again."

"Okay," She finally whispered in agreement. "Let me help you at least. I'll give you some money for the potion, and then we can–"

"Absolutely not!" Rose interrupted without allowing her friend to finish the crazy thought. "That would eat up your entire allowance for the rest of this term. Don't be ridiculous."

"I'd do it for you... it's just money."

"I know you would," Rose smiled meekly. "And I appreciate it …but no. Malfoy got me into this mess; he's damn well going to help me get out. The bloke probably has three hundred galleons just laying around in a bloody piggy bank somewhere anyway."

"What do you think he's gonna do after you tell him?"

Rose shrugged. "No idea. Probably freak the hell out; I can only imagine. At least my panic has come in waves. Gradually spaced out over the last five days while waiting for my never-arriving period to show up."

The brunette was silent, shaking her head and looking up at the redhead before she finally spoke. "I still can't believe you slept with him in the first place, Rose... After seven bloody years of constant rejection. Merlin, as if hooking up one time wasn't bad enough. What was Halloween, again – the fourth?"

Actually, the fifth time (and sixth later on that following morning), but who was counting? Rose deemed it unnecessary to make the correction.

"Yes, I know. Thanks." Rose began pacing nervously. "Go ahead – judge some more. Lord knows, I do."

"I wasn't judging," she corrected. "Just trying to make sense of it all, I guess. I still haven't been able to."

"That's because there's no sense to be made!" Rose groaned with misery. "I was piss drunk, and he was there."

Ah, the classically used excuse of drunken boredom she had since told Ali was the root source of her past decisions regarding Scorpius Malfoy. Of course, there was some truth of the matter behind it. Their first initial encounter had been significantly fueled by pounding adrenaline off a Quidditch win against Ravenclaw, and a celebratory party in the Gryffindor common room.

"Tell him tonight," Ali suggested. "After dinner. Maybe even before then. The sooner, the better, I think."

"Tonight?" Rose grimaced at the mere thought. "I feel like that may be too early... Hell, you know what, on second thought, I'll just ask McGonagall for permission to floo home and steal the money from my parents. It'll be far easier – "

"Rose," Ali gave out a knowing look, trying not to smile at Rose's unruly suggestion. "You have to tell him eventually. He deserves to know."

"I know that."

"So then why prolong the inevitable?"

"Right," Rose breathed with a heavy heart. "The inevitable."


A/N: Hello everyone!
Good lord, I know it's been a long, LONG time since I've posted anything on here, but I've been working on this new story recently and wanted to share some of it with you.
I've never done a time-travel fic before, so we'll see how this all turns out… Just trying to get all the background info included for right now.

Please forgive any type-o's which may be lurking around that I might've missed. I don't have a beta, and proof-reading is quite literally the bane of my existence. I do try, though.

Thank you all for taking the time to read and (maybe?) review this! Let me know of any thoughts you might have; I do love to hear them. No matter how brief.