For Ellie's dare. Two-shot.

Warning: M-rated only for one short non-graphic sex scene (and my paranoia). Includes student/teacher, but all sexual activity depicted is between people of legal age in the place both they and I live.

Note: This story involves an OC who carries a canon surname. To minimise confusion, I will tell you that the OC's father is the older brother of two minor canon characters. There is no canon evidence that the brother existed; he is also an invention of mine.

Part One

Caesar's Angel

Her fourth year. His seventh. April, but it feels like a good day in August.

The top of the Astronomy tower, and she's reading a book, a thick paperback with a black and gold cover. He's never spoken to her before, but he can't help but notice the perfect ivory curve of her shoulder as her t-shirt slips off it, and the light freckles that cover it. And he wants her to look at him, damnit, because girls always look at him, but all he gets is a glance that doesn't even take in who he is, let alone the sweep of dark hair and the brown eyes with the flecks of gold in them and the warm smile he flashes her way. Instead, she frowns slightly, irritated by the interruption to her reading, and then returns her attention to her book, red hair falling in front of her face as the sun sets the edges of it on fire.

He offers her a cigarette. She says no, not even a thank you. He asks her what she's reading, and she holds it up without even looking at him, so he can see for himself. It is the Oresteia. He cannot immediately think of a comment, so there is silence for a few moments while he observes her, cigarette dangling from his mouth. Then he removes it to speak again.

"Ever been to Greece?"

And finally she is looking at him and actually seeing him, assessing whether or not he is really worth talking to.

"No."

"I have," she did not ask, but he answers anyway, "My grandmother's Greek. We've got a house out there."

Her attention is caught, but she refuses to be impressed.

"That's nice for you. I only like the literature really."

He nods, a faint grin crossing his face. "Fair enough. 'Oh, the torment bred in the race, the grinding scream of death...'" he quotes casually, nodding at the book in her hand, and breaking off, because this time she cannot keep the respect off her face, although her voice is as casual as his as she quotes back.

"'and the stroke that hits the vein, the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief, the curse no man can bear,'" briefly, she smiles at him, "The Libation Bearers. I'm going to get that as a tattoo some time."

Somehow, he believes her.

"Sure you don't want a cigarette?" he asks, after a pause.

"No, thanks."

Her fifth year. He's researching Ancient Runes in Greece of all places, and as he stands among the Doric columns, he can't help thinking of her, quoting Aeschylus at him on the top of the Astronomy Tower, or of the taste of her when he kissed her, later.

And it isn't that bad, he tells himself, because she's sixteen now (she was only fifteen when he kissed her first, but details) and he's only just turned nineteen, and he doesn't know anyone else who can quote more literature than him, and somehow the beautiful words falling from her lips are such a turn on that all obstacles cease to matter.

"I miss you," he writes on the postcard with the picture of the Crete coastline on the front, "But hey, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. Wish you were here. Alex."

"Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows," comes the reply, "Sextus Propertius, Elegies. Roman poet born around 45BC, earliest known form of the proverb. Rose."

And he is left wondering whether she is telling him she misses him too, or whether she just likes knowing this stuff, but it hardly matters because he still wants her, whether she's kind or not. And he can play this game and dance this dance too, so he calls her Lady Disdain in his letters, and doesn't tell her that he lies awake in the velvet Mediterranean night and imagines her lithe form lying next to him, or that when he closes his eyes, all he sees are the brightness of her hair and the scatter of freckles across her nose and the condescending smile she gives him when she's right about something.

The middle of her sixth year. Just after his twentieth birthday.

He comes home to find that she has indeed had the passage from the Libation Bearers tattooed in navy blue from her neck to her wrist, and there's something about it that just fascinates him, whether it's the power of the words or the erotic beauty of the art on her body. She lets him trace the letters down her arm, and then she lets him trace the contours of her body, fire and ice across her skin, and she is just as eager as he is as her fingers push his clothes away. He is her first, and although she doesn't have it in her to act the scared, innocent girl, it is perhaps the most vulnerable he has ever seen her. He is careful and considerate though, and murmurs sweet words in her ear, and she gasps and moves against him, and looks into his eyes as they fall together into white.

And afterwards, he offers her a cigarette again, and she says yes and smokes it like an expert, so that, for a moment, he wonders with some resentment who has been giving her cigarettes while he was away. She lies on her back as she inhales slowly, staring at the ceiling with that inscrutable expression, and he watches her and waits.

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it," she says at last, her fingers moving the cigarette away from her lips as a small smile tugs at the corner of them. And he laughs and runs a hand down her ink-covered arm.

"Oscar Wilde," he comments, "And have you got rid of that temptation for good then?"

She turns her head to look at him then, and the smile slowly grows, a mischievous glint to it.

"No, I don't think so."

The beginning of her seventh year. He has a job.

Her reaction is stunned silence, the expression in her eyes torn between horror and amusement.

Amusement wins.

"So..." she says at last, her lips curling into that smile, "I'll be shagging my teacher. How scandalous. And you," she turns to look at him, her eyes and tone provoking him, "will be shagging your student. Professor."

He enjoys teaching, likes his subject, but his NEWT class is an exquisite torture; not that she ever does anything, but he only has to catch her eye and he's thinking of things that are not on the curriculum, and she knows it; he can see her amusement on her face, hear it in her voice as she calls him Professor Greengrass, with that mocking edge that is faint enough to go unnoticed by anyone. Or so he hopes.

It doesn't help that his cousin is in the same class and best friends with her cousin (more than friends, if the rumours are right), and Scorpius Malfoy sees and notices everything. It is only a matter of time, Alex thinks, and he is right. He dismisses his class one day, and is bending over some notes for his Fourth Years when he feels that prickle in the back of his neck that suggests that he is not alone. He looks up, and the blonde boy (he has his father's face, but at seventeen he is already taller than Draco Malfoy, as tall as Alex) is standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the lintel and smiling in a way that is unbearably smug. Alex scowls (he cannot help it).

"What is it?"

Scorpius smirks.

"Don't worry. I won't tell anyone." And he is gone, and just like that, their secret is no longer safe.

Her prefect duties always seem to end somewhere around his office. She sits on his bed in her underwear and an unbuttoned school shirt, her ink letters showing under the collar and at her cuff, red hair tousled in post-shag relaxation, casually editing the essay she is due to hand in to him the next day, and he cannot help but think how wrong this whole thing is.

He offers her help with her essay. She says no, slightly shortly. He falls silent and lights a cigarette instead, watching the way her forehead creases when she's concentrating, and the small jerk of her head every time she spots a mistake, and the paleness of her bare legs sprawled out in front of her. Then his mouth opens, and he is somehow telling her that his little cousin has found them out, and although he tries hard not to sound as if it worries him, he doesn't think she's fooled. She tilts her eyebrow at him.

"Well, he won't tell," she says complacently.

"He might. He might tell your cousin..."

"He won't." She is quite adamant, and he wonders what makes her so sure, but then she is always sure.

Now that he has started to put voice to the ghosts that haunt him, though, he cannot stop, however much he hates how it makes him sound – has becoming a professor really made him start worrying about propriety? About morals? About what people will think?

"We can't keep it a secret forever. Someone's going to find out... whether he tells or not, someone will..."

"Let them find out..."

"We can't, Rose, I'm your teacher..."

She makes a sudden restless movement, a gesture of anger and frustration.

"Why the fuck did you have to go and get this job, Alex?"

"I needed a job," he points out, his voice tight, "It's a good one – I like it..."

She looks at him for a moment, her face that inscrutable blank that he hasn't learnt to read yet.

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind," she tells him, still looking at him. There is silence for a moment, while he does not reply. "Aristotle," she informs him distantly, when it becomes clear that he is not going to respond, "Thought you would have known that one."

And maybe, maybe she is right, because there was a time when he worried about nothing – when Alex Greengrass was invincible, when the world was at his feet, when his mind and tongue could win any battle and nobody could match him. Now, he is only too aware of his own vulnerability and the worries come creeping in, one on top of the other, and he misses that careless teenage boy he used to be. He has changed, though, it seems, and he's not sure what's changed him – the job or Rose... or maybe, maybe it's just called growing up.

She though, she is still seventeen, going on eighteen, and she is still invincible, still untouchable, still flying high, and she does not want to think of 'what ifs' because what is life if you're always looking ahead to the drop?

The summer term of her seventh year.

Three years almost exactly since they met, and still he rarely knows what she is thinking, because she is the mistress of this dance, and just when he thinks he knows the steps, she changes them. Uncertainty, guilt, fear... he lives with them, those emotions he never knew before. She does not seem to notice; he cannot even tell whether she cares. She speaks in quotes and riddles, and it is like talking in a language you almost understand; you hear the words and you know that you know them, and you grasp for the meaning and it slips from you, just out of reach.

The stolen kiss behind his desk between classes. The sun is coming in the window, lighting the dust particles into a fine golden haze. He knows that it is a risk, but it is hot and he is tired and it is only a moment, after all, a moment in which her lips meet his and he can breathe in her scent... a moment that will be frozen forever in his memory.

The startled voice of the Deputy Headmaster breaks in, surprise turning to shock and disgust as he realises what he is seeing. The moment is lost in panic; this is not happening, this cannot be happening, he will wake up and it will be a nightmare, his worst nightmare. His worst nightmare coming true. And in amongst the panic, there is guilt; guilt that he, a teacher, has committed the most terrible of sins, has failed in his responsibility, has abused his power... and it will haunt him forever, but later he cannot escape the knowledge that in that moment when the world came crashing down, his first thought, his greatest fear, was for the job that he must surely lose.

The accusing voices come thick and fast. The headmistress; the senior staff, the distant chatter of scandalised students.

She stands beside him, straight, upright and uncaring of it all. No panic in her face and voice; she is as calm and disdainful as always, and while his protesting voice - "A one off! Won't happen again, I swear!" - is drowned in accusations, hers comes loud and clear, the voice of reason.

"It's not like that. I'm not a child. We've been together for years, since we were both at school – there's nothing wrong with two students going out, is there? I'll be finished school in a few weeks; we'll just be two adults, and there's nothing wrong with that either, is there? He's only three years older than me.

"We're in love. I'm carrying his child."

The words fall like rocks in a deep pool. He does not know what they mean. He has never heard her speak plainly before; never heard her come straight to the point. And he does not know what to make of it. He does not know why she is saying it, whether it is true, because she's never mentioned love before, and she's never mentioned a child either. All he knows is fear and uncertainty, and the hopeless thing is that he does not trust her.

"You're carrying his child?" the voice of the Headmistress is heavy with horror and disbelief, as she turns to him, "Professor Greengrass... Alexander... is this possible? Have you had sexual relations with Miss Weasley?"

It is his death warrant, placed plainly in front of him, waiting for him to sign it. He cannot do it.

"No. It was a kiss – just one kiss. A mistake. Just a momentary thing..."

Her face is turned towards him, and he knows then that he was wrong. Her riddles have fallen away, and all that is left is raw emotion. Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. But she is still Rose Weasley, and she has danced for so long that she cannot stop.

"Caesar's Angel," she whispers, her voice somehow unfamiliar, changed. Dead. He cannot answer.

"I beg your pardon?" the Headmistress is incredulous.

"Look it up."

He does not need to look it up. He knows that it is Shakespeare, Julius Caesar to be exact. And Caesar's Angel was Brutus, the man guilty of the ultimate betrayal. Yes, now, at last, he understands what she is saying. But it is too late, because she has gone.