Dedicated to echoing noise, a.k.a. Paige, who dared me to do this! The dare is as follows:
Jo, dare you to do a JamesRose. Prompts - and you have to use all of them - are:
not (or knot), rhyme, ill, left, ignore (or ignorance), naive, angry, reason, doubt, hold hands, broken up (be creative with that one), and pronoun.
Or, you can use only five of the thirteen prompts - but if you do, the fic has to be either under 60 words, or above 700.
That's copied-and-pasted. So, yes, I'm doing a little incest in this one. I say a little because there's no action, nothing graphic; just thoughts and feelings. The T rating is just because of the language, which is bad at some points.
Just Like a Monarchy
It was the Potter Curse's fault.
All Potters just had to fall for a redhead, didn't they? It didn't matter how many perfectly nice blonds, brunettes, and other not-red-haired girls came along; if you were a Potter male, then you would end up falling for a redhead.
End of story.
But the beginning of James'.
XxxxX
She was an eternal not. Not an angel, not just her parents' daughter. She may have been the Brightest Witch of her age, yeah, but not in grades; she didn't give a shit about grades, so she didn't even try. (It goes without saying that if she had, she would've beaten everyone else out of the water.) She wasn't all warmthhugssmiles like her other Weasley relatives; if they were right, then she was left.
And she took pride in that.
Maybe that was why James seemed to be the only exception to her i-i-icy exterior. He knew that she was different; he told her so; he accepted it. "What's the big deal about you being different?" he would ask when they were younger, sitting outside by a frozen pond, holding hands so they wouldn't freeze to death (no other reason).
Rose would smile- not a happy one, but a grim one, an almost sad one- and say in a voice aged far too much for someone not even at school yet, "It's hard to explain, Jamie. Our parents fought for a world without evil, yeah; but in doing that, they've forgotten that there are different types of good than just them."
"Aunt 'Mione and Uncle Ron don't think you're evil!" The idea was preposterous; they adored their daughter. But Rose just laughed, shaking her head.
"No, but they don't trust me enough not to turn evil."
James couldn't help but wonder how a girl one year younger than him could be so wise, so morbid, without breaking up into thousands of pieces, like a vase thrown at a wall. He knew that if his brain was filled with those kinds of thoughts, he'd be as broken as a glass at a Jewish wedding. He was much happier that he was naïve.
If only Rose could be, too.
XxxxX
Redheads look too good in green for none of them to ever end up in Slytherin.
Rose looked striking in her Hogwarts robes.
XxxxX
Years passed, and James became Rose's rock. Throughout the Howlers, the disappointment, the rumors, the pressure of it all, James would always be at Rose's side. There wasn't any special reason- what else were best friends before?
And best friends they were. It was the typical cliché story: best friends do everything together, realize that they're meant to be, and fall for each other. With that evil little twist that, y'know, they're cousins, so they weren't meant to be at all.
Except that they sort of were, because the Weasley girls happened to be the only redheads at Hogwarts besides Al's girlfriend, so James was going to have to fall for one of them eventually.
XxxxX
He couldn't help but feel insulted when he found Rose scribbling on a paper with a passionate fervor, asked her what she was writing, and was promptly told, "Nothing, go away."
She hadn't even looked up.
So of course James had to poke her until she did.
"I'm busy, James!" she snapped when she finally graced him with her gaze, dark eyes narrowed.
"Doing what?" he asked. "Not schoolwork, surely."
Rose snorted. "Of course not, that's about as likely as my father accepting that I'm in Slytherin."
James didn't let the awkward silence begin. "So then what are you doing?"
"I told you, it's nothing!" Rose exclaimed, her cheeks flushing. "Just- just a little verse, that's all."
"Like a poem?" Rose reluctantly nodded. "That's so cool! Can I read it?"
"No!" The redhead looked horrified at the mere idea of it. "It's awful, James, really. Very amateur. I don't want to make you ill."
"You're the ill one; you're crazy enough to think that your poem's bad! I'm sure it's amazing, now give it here!"
"No!"
The ensuing fight lasted about fifteen minutes and traveled throughout the entire room, which was mercifully empty. Chairs were turned over; couches were trodden upon. Finally, James tripped over something- he didn't get a chance to see what exactly- and ended up flat on the ground.
Or at least, he would've been if Rose wasn't directly under him.
They both froze. They were old enough to know what this… position meant. For a few minutes, they stared at each other; Rose's eyes were brown like Aunt Hermione's, but seemed so much darker, almost a black really, like a black hole, sucking him in…
He blinked and forced himself to snap out of it, grabbing Rose's poem out of her hand and jumping up triumphantly. She yelped and followed suit.
"No! Give that back! Don't you dare read it- I start some sentences with pronouns, that's practically blasphemy in writing- close that parchment, James!"
James wasn't listening. He was too busy reading. When he was done, he looked up at Rose in awe.
"Rosie, this is… amazing," he breathed. "You've got a real talent."
To her surprise, instead of blushing modestly and insisting with an abashed smile that it wasn't that good, she glared at him. Flat-out glared. Her eyes narrowed; her bottom lip trembled.
She was angry.
"That was mine," she growled. "Mine. I know damn well that I'm good at poetry, James, and that was my secret. Our family's too fucking big for any of us to have a secret, and I was proud of myself for being the exception. And now you've ruined it."
James gaped at her. "I- I'm sorry, Rosie, I didn't mean to-"
"Oh, of course you didn't," the Slytherin scoffed. "That's why you just chased me around the room for fifteen minutes to get it!"
"I didn't know it was a secret-"
"Duh it was a secret, that's why I didn't tell you in the first place!" Her eyes softened suddenly, and she sighed, tired. "Just… keep it, okay? I'll… see you around."
"Rose- Rose, wait!" James called out, but Rose was already gone (he wondered why that hurt so much). What was her problem? It was an accident, and it wasn't as if James was going to tell anyone about this secret of hers.
There has to be some other reason, he decided in a rare show of logic; on a whim, he reread the poem.
Flash, crash, boom,
Just as cars race, brooms zoom
Through the air, this way and that
And one figure is the king of them,
The king of everything
To her.
Brr, brr,
It's cold outside, little girl,
Don't you want to go back in?
"No," she says,
"I like it this way,"
And no one can dissuade her
From spending the day
Out there
In the cold
In the brr, brr cold.
So he goes out and sits with her
Because that way, if she gets hypothermia
At least she won't be alone
In the cold
In the brr, brr cold.
They hold hands
And they talk
And it's oh-so-innocent that really,
It's anything but
In the cold
In the brr, brr cold.
And she never tells that boy,
That king of everything,
That he is the king of everything
(Including her heart)
No, she keeps her feelings shut up tight
Under lock and key and lock again
Because she may be the rebel
The evil[-but-not-really] one
But she knows better
She knows better
So she stays out there
In the cold
In the brr, brr cold.
His second thought was that the poem, though beautiful, didn't have much in the way of rhyming at all. His first was that the girl sounded an awful lot like Rose, and he didn't know who her King could be besides him.
XxxxX
For the following week, she ignored him, and he used that time to contemplate his theory. Doubts came and went and eventually stayed; nevertheless, he made up his mind. He knew what he had to do.
One day, as he left History of Magic, he saw her; before she could react, he grabbed her arm and pulled her aside, protesting and kicking, into an empty classroom.
"Just talk to me," he asked before she could even scream. "Please. Is that so much to ask for?"
"When you've practically kidnapped me? Yes, yes it is."
"I haven't, though. You can leave anytime you want; the door's not locked," the Gryffindor pointed out. "I'm asking you to talk to me, not forcing you to. I miss you. We haven't spoken all week."
"Really? I hadn't noticed." James could tell by the way that Rose is staring so brazenly into his eyes that she was lying.
"Bullshit," he declared shortly, and then changed the topic before Rose could get hot-headed on him (even if she did look rather sexy when she got like that). "Here's your poem," he told her, placing it gently into her soft hand.
"Thank you," she replied stiffly, avoiding his gaze.
"It's really good. Amazing, actually." Rose said nothing, so James went on. "You know, I started thinking about the British monarchy from reading it. 'Cause there's a king mentioned in it and everything. I looked it up in the library- don't give me that look!- and a lot of kings married their cousins."
Rose froze.
"Yep. Third cousins, second cousins, even first cousins. I was thinking about it, and I don't think that the king in your poem should be any exception."
Rose blinked. James smirked. "Think about it," he advised with a wink. Then he left the classroom, letting her do exactly that.
XxxxX
(It didn't take her too long to make her decision. The Weasley family is Wizarding royalty these days anyways.)
Well, there it is. The poem, just so you know, was written by yours truly; I know that it doesn't have a set number of lines per verse, but deal with it. Like Rose said, she's an amateur. :P
Hope you all didn't hate it! Thanks for reading, and please review! ^^
-Joelle8