Hello! New story, hope you enjoy. It shall be multi-chap. There is one scene that could be described as a little graphic, because of violence. A little over 2,000 words.
To any who read my Lunar Chronicles story, I know I have not updated in forever, but I have many quite valid explanations. I'll explain it on We'll Be OK later.
Baby, I'm howlin' for you.
- Black Keys (my theme song:)
Rose glanced surreptitiously from side to side, then edged the tight heels off of her feet and propped them up. It had been a long week, with half a dozen meetings and deadlines to meet. Mr. Alderton had nearly had her head over late notes, and her favorite quill had been squeaking for sixteen hours. It was somewhere around eight at night, and she was allowed to clock out as soon as Jesse got here. All because one spell developed to make Apparation easier absolutely had to be introduced to the Ministry by Christmas.
I will never trust a man named Jesse again, Rose thought irritably, something in her back popping as she stretched. That boy was always late, half drunk, and eyeing the secretary's backside. The secretary in question was always bringing in roses with simpers of delight over her hapless suitors. The irony was not lost on Rose.
Realizing she had doodled a curvy girl applying the loser sign to her own forehead, Rose sharply flicked her wand to store it away for future speculation as she heard heavy footfalls approaching. And there was Jesse Hobday, the Great Prat in person.
"Hey, Rosie. Sorry I'm late. There was a young lady in dire need of help," Rose was suddenly fixated on how far up and down his eyebrows could go.
"I do not want to hear about your exploits, Hobday! Good day and have fun doing the registration papers," Rose replied shortly, and strode out of the cubicle, ends of her scarves swinging. In the winter, in Rose Weasley's book, it was mandatory to have at least one fuzzy scarf on hand. Ducking to avoid an especially ambitious paper airplane smelling of cologne, she wiggled her fingers in a goodbye to the irritating secretary.
The tiling in the hallways, a clean white, reflected the clicking of her purple heels. While a great vintage find, they were quite impractical in the matters of stealth and travel by foot. Head down, avoiding cracks in the floor as she walked, Rose jumped when a hand clamped down on her shoulder.
"Rozzie!" she whirled around at the familiar voice, and tackled the person in tall young man grunted, his skinny knees buckling.
"Chris! When did you get back? Did they shorten your contract?" Rose beamed up into the face of her best friend.
"Naw. Charlie just reckoned with the matriarchs settling down for the winter, I could have a leave a couple weeks early, along with Christmas," Christopher Wood slung a comfortable arm around Rose's shoulders, and steered her towards the employee cafeteria.
"Got any good burns to show me?" Chris's face lit up at the mention of anything dragon related. A witch clad in tweed gave them a strange look as she passed by. It took a lot of strength for Rose not to comment on her flipped hair.
"A couple, though I can't right strip here. Or if you want, we can put on a show…" he trailed off, his good-natured face split into a laws of the world-and-everything defyingly wide smile. Rose laughed loudly, and hit his arm, which was noticeably less stringy than the last time she had seen him.
"I named the latest Anna. She's a Welsh, but I swear she'll develop some blue scales on her stomach in the next year," Chris stopped talking about his latest love long enough to find a table for two. The caf held witches and wizards that had deep purple bags below their eyes and large case files, aside from a few chipper visitors like the young man who stood out with his frosted tips, scars and tattoos.
"What'll it be, Roz?" Chris studied the sparse menu, raising his eyes to get her answer.
"I'll be wild and get a mocha, I think… Oh, Merlin!" she theatrically clapped a hand to her forehead, a habit developed in the weeks leading up to OWLs, a few months after they had started smuggling food to empty classrooms together and become best mates over this common ground.
"What?"Chris had grown accustomed to the antics of the Potter-Weasley clan, and so was on guard whenever such a statement was issued by Rose.
"I'm really sorry, my bestest mate in the whole entire universe of the cosmos, but I promised Rudy that I would meet him for tea or something. He's had a paper due, and I haven't seen him for weeks, practically," Rose winced at her own forgetfulness, and the crinkle occupying Chris' forehead.
"When will you stop breaking my heart?It's okay, I'll just follow you home from work tomorrow, or something creepy like that. And chat up the barista in the meantime. He's pretty cute...I mean for a guy with such skinny legs," Rose smiled and kissed him on the cheek, swinging her jacket back on.
"His name is Jamie!" She called out, without turning around. She didn't mention that he had lived in the Gryffindor tower with them for five years, and had a penchant for making things explode.
The air outside was crisp, but refreshing, and free of the dank smell of old parchment. Her mother may have loved the smell, but it got tiresome to Rose after long days in the office. She had been an intern for a good six months, and was hoping to get officially hired soon. Then there would be pay, benefits and less brewing coffee for stodgy elders.
A smattering of dirty snow lay in the London gutters, and a thin layer of ice crunched under Rose's feet. Casting a furtive nonverbal focillo, her hand curled around her wand in its nook inside her thin coat, a gentle warmth spread to her toes. Her nose tingled as it combated the icy wind with magic.
Rudy's flat was pathetically close to the Ministry, their shared work place, so she opted to walk through the festively lit streets instead of Apparate. As they wound into smaller, more cramped roads, the intersections grew less busy and the occasional wilting tree sprouted from the sidewalk. A man curiously dressed as an elf waved energetically to her, bells clinking on a tall green hat. Muggles.
Rounding a corner, Rose grinned at the green Victorian Rudy shared with a mob of Gryffindors, perpetually squatting in the mud pit that had swallowed the front yard. Johnie, who insisted on spelling his name "originally", was having a shouting match with the Muggle postal man. Oh, dear, Rose thought and went to intervene.
"Johnie! Did I get my package?" she called, improvising, while trying not to trip over errant refuse.
"What? Oh, hi Rose. This little piece of.." Rose had reached him and hastily elbowed him in the gut as he started to swear again.
"I'm really sorry, sir. My friend has been forgetting his meds recently," Johnie resisted for a moment, then gave up as Rose led him to the entryway.
"Anyone else home?" she asked, after giving him a fierce glare and firmly shutting the door.
"Rudy's been whinging all day, waiting for you. The rest of the fellas are in the basement arguing over a game of Exploding Snap. Imbeciles," Johnie sniffed derisively, then stalked back up to his room, sliding his glasses back up his curved nose. Rose sniggered quietly to herself, then followed him, turning right.
His door open, Rudy was hunched over parchment, frantically scratching with the worn eagle feather quill Rose had gotten him for his birthday, three months ago. Letting herself ponder over how cute he was when his hair stuck up that high, she leaned against the doorway. Hearing the slide of the fabric, Rudy looked up and grinned widely at her.
Bounding out of the armchair that had taken many a balancing spell to get up the stairs, he came over to where he stood. He kissed her forehead, the feeling a tiny murmur against her skin, then harder on her lips.
"Hi," he said, in a whisper, his nose colliding with hers. She slid her fingers through his dark hair.
"Hello," she laughed, and kissed him again.
"Oi! Get a room! Just because you have a girl doesn't mean you can show her off," that had to be Marcus, a hard-drinking layabout who had yet to acquire a job and pay his monthly rent.
"I object," Rudy said, smiling quizzically at his girlfriend, still bent over from all her giggling. Gesturing to him with a nudge, Rose stole his seat and bent over to look at what he was working on. Arithmancy, it seemed, which was not good considering Rose was absolute rubbish at the subject. The alphabet was so much more sensible than numbers.
"How's the work going?" she asked, trying to decipher one of the simpler problems on the page.
"Fine. But my life has been quite dull without you, darling," Rudy said, a slightly wicked smile on his face.
"Aww, thanks, doll. But, before you distract me with your wooing, I have to leave… Um, in half an hour. I'm sorry, it's a Weasley function on fricking Thursday night. They have no respect for eighteen year olds," at Rudy's horrible attempt to pout, Rose went over to sit on his neatly made bed.
"Agh! Sorry, your hair somehow made its way into my mouth," leaning against his side, Rose laughed and tucked the red frizz behind her ear. Snaking his hand around her waist, he leaned back, tipping them both back. Lying side by side, Rose sank back into the mattress.
With a jolt, Rose awoke. Staring at the horribly beige ceiling with winding cracks, she realized she was still at Rudy's. The boy was curled in on himself, wheezing slightly in his sleep. Extricating herself carefully, Rose waved her wand to write out a note in golden ink. It would do no good to awake him. Stepping into the hallway, Rose closed her eyes and spun, the room splitting into a thousand fragments of light.
She landed with a thud in tall grass. Bother. She should have allowed herself another minute to wake up before trying to Apparate. The Burrow was nowhere in sight. With a sigh of resignation, she whispered lumos and headed in what she believed to be a southerly direction.
As the grass thinned, she heard a sharp snap behind her. Whirling around, she saw nothing, only the grass gently swaying in the night breeze. The croak of a frog sounded, then was quickly silenced, as if someone had gestured for it to be quiet. Holding up her lit wand, Rose cast light on the vast silent wilderness before her. Now the night was eerily quiet, devoid of crickets chirping and the calls of the mournful night birds that clustered in these woods at night.
I'm being way too paranoid, Rose thought finally, and swung back around to try and feel her way to more flat ground, get her bearings, and Apparate once again. Climbing a hillock, another noise sounded. It was distinctly the sound of jaws being clamped. A tooth scraping against another.
Her mind process stilled, Rose turned in time to get a glimpse of the being behind her.
A slavering beast, the wolf that stood below her must have come to her waist. It's fur glowed, lit up by the full moon hung behind the tree line. The full moon. A pink tongue slipped out of a red mouth to lick it's shining teeth, it's eyes dark and harshly intelligent. The second before it struck, Rose had time think one word. Werewolf.
Rose wasn't sure whether she screamed before it struck, or the second it's teeth sank so easily into her neck. So small next to those jaws. The pain hit a second after, excruciating, ripping from the top of her body to the bottom. The burn was intensified as the wolf went to tear at the flesh once again. Rose could smell her blood, and feel its slickness running down her shirt and pool around her hands. She knew then, that she was to die in the next moment. That was when Rose dimly registered a shout. Red flashed, and the weight was off of her chest.
The last thing she saw before spinning into blackness was a pair of gray eyes.
Whose eyes do you think those are? Thanks so much for reading! If you were to leave a review, which would be awesome, I request no flames please. And another thing is that if you think that Rose was Mary Sue-ish, I promise she's more complex and I'll build her character up soon :).
-Elwood