NOTES. Harry Potter and everything associated etc. is J.K. Rowling's, I've just borrowed it for now. Kaycee O'Malley is wholly and completely Nanii's creation. This a a second part to Nanii's story Bed of Roses (her pen-name's NRC, and you should totally go and read it because it's 5024x better than this, I promise).

Nothing compares
No worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes
They are memories made.
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?

-Adele.

Rose is in a hurry. She hurries a lot these days; because everyone knows the best way not to think about anything at all is to be completely rushed off of your feet. Most of the time it works. Consequently, she's picking some Muggle plant up from the florist's on the way home for Jamie. She has no idea why he wants it, but she'd volunteered nonetheless. If nothing else, she tells herself that it gives her the excuse to go round to her cousin's to check that he's okay, just in case: he is single on Valentine's Day after all.

She tells herself that she's perfectly fine with the date being what it is. Single is fine for her. Sure, she misses her ex (only quite recently ex, at that), but if anything, it's his friendship she misses. Seth was lovely, but it's only really since they broke up – perfectly amicably, he moved away – that she realised there was an elusive something (someone) else that perhaps she was looking for. There have been flings since: not a lot of emotion involved, perhaps, but lots of really great sex. No-one who's met her family, though, no-one who's mattered.

Oh yes, Rose is fine about Valentine's Day, but that doesn't mean that after she's been to Jamie's she's not going to go straight home to put her head under her pillow and then drink an entire bottle of cheap red wine. There's only so long you can push certain emotions away after working alongside Jessica-fucking-Edwards with her oh-so-perfect-bloody-boyfriend all day. It has nothing to do with it being the fourteenth of February at all. Not one bit.

She's taken to wearing lipstick in a shade called 'Revenge', which means nothing at all; it's just a bright, strong red that she can hide any emotions behind. It's striking against her pale skin, unnatural but attractively so. It's a lot easier to be actually in control of a situation if you can pretend you are: Rose learnt that the hard way, a long time ago now. She's needs the pretend confidence more these days than she likes to contemplate, but she's been feeling brittle and breakable and insubstantial since forever. Rose Weasley doesn't 'do' delicate and frail, she's not precious enough for that, but like it or not (admit it or not), she's doing so right now.

Everyone's noticed of course, that Rose – who always was softer than she liked to pretend – has got harder edges than she used to; a hollowness in her laugh and a dimmer light in her eyes. They won't bring it up with Rose though, not Rose who's had any situation perfectly under her control since she was old enough to walk and talk. Consequently, perhaps, Rose doesn't know who to talk to. Rose doesn't even know if she wants to talk to anyone (of course she doesn't need to, why would you think that?), but if she hypothetically did, then everyone has their own issues and who is she to burden them with her not-really problems?

As someone hits her, Rose stumbles. She'd like to blame it on the heels she's wearing (beautiful and definitely not appropriate for days in laboratories, but very appropriate for days spent trying to find funding from somewhere, as she's done today), but in reality she was just too lost in thoughts of the past and lists of things to do to distract herself to pay attention to her balance or even just the here and now.

She bites back her irritation at the fumbled apology that inevitably comes, feeling immediately guilty at even the thought of snapping. Rose always had a temper, but she liked to think it was reserved for appropriate situations (or people). She's so angry all the time at the minute, she can feel it boiling just below the surface of her skin, but she doesn't fly off the handle at nothing, not yet. Politely, almost contritely, she looks up to apologise in return, to take her share of the blame, when-

"Oh." It's almost a squeak, not quite, but almost. Kaycee O'Malley. Shit. Fuck.

Suddenly she's glad that she wasn't in the lab today. It means that instead of frizzy hair pulled back however, she's smartly dressed in what she secretly still calls her 'grown-up clothes' in her mind. Nice coat, nice dress, nice shoes, nice hair: put-together Rose, Mark II.

For a moment she says nothing, hoping that he will say something else – anything to set the tone of their encounter. She feels frozen to the spot, because there- there, all of a sudden is that hard, sharp feeling that she's been unconsciously longing for, and now she can't think of anything else, can't distract herself with thoughts of the florist that she can see down the road behind Kaycee…

Florist. Kaycee's holding a rose. A single rose on Valentine's Day. It's about as plain a declaration of romantic intent that she can think of, and she wonders who it's for. Someone she knows, someone she's never met? Something inside her withers and wilts a little and there's a lump in her throat, and she rubs at her ankle to give herself a couple of seconds to compose herself, because – surprisingly – this really, really hurts; a bone-deep, soul-crushing kind of pain that she'd forgotten she was capable of feeling.

Belatedly, she realises she ought to say something, but now it feels as if her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she's not sure she doesn't trust her eyes to prick and start watering if she opens her mouth to attempt to talk. It's ridiculous, this whole thing is ridiculous: she's a young, professional, perfectly capable woman – why on earth would she want to humiliate herself in the middle of the street over the fact that a long-ago ex-boyfriend (with whom the relationship disintegrated in spectacular imploding-star fashion more than two years ago now) is taking flowers to another girl on Valentine's Day. She should be happy for him: their story's over, and she knows and accepts that, so why in Merlin's name does she have the ridiculous urge to kick him, hard, and then run away?

She doesn't quite meet his eye, but - to paraphrase Shakespeare and her maternal grandmother who encouraged her in the reading of it – she screws her courage to the sticking place long enough to look in the general direction of Kaycee and say, clearly enough (although it won't ever win a prize for diction), "Sorry."

It feels a little bit like she's torturing herself as she drags her gaze round to meet his. There was a time she could tell precisely what he was thinking by the look in his eyes, by the pressure of his hand as it touched hers. She wonders if she still could. Right now, she can't read him at all, and that hurts just as much as the fact that she has interrupted him in wooing another woman. No-one every buys Rose roses: she wouldn't want them to, it's a little bit too much of a cliché, but the fact that he's found someone who he likes - loves? - enough to buy them for cuts her to the quick.

Now she's looking, she can't quite seem to stop; and still he says nothing, and still she says nothing, and neither of them move at all. Should she just walk past, consign him to her past where he belongs? The answer, she thinks, probably, is yes. But she doesn't. If she's staying, she should say something. Some polite, well-constructed, civilised remark on the weather or politics, or a genuine well-wish to his new love. But she won't (can't) do any of those.

And so Rose stands, heart in mouth and pride in shreds, in the middle of an otherwise deserted pavement on a cold and miserable February evening waiting – waiting – for someone to say something.