"...Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat'st brooding upon the vast abyss
And mad'st pregnant. What is in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support…"
Book I: Lines 19-23. Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667
Chapter One
The light filled the corners of her mind, soft and white, like the pages of a new book. Every worry, every thought that had haunted her in consciousness slipped away as she stared, eyes wide open, into that welcoming bright abyss.
"Opening…." The voice said, or was it voices? She could not tell. They were sexless, beautiful, resonating like a gong in her mind rather than her ears.
"…are coming…."
"Who is coming?" She wished to shout, but her breath seemed to have vanished from her chest, and the words faded on her tongue.
"Opening…" The voice repeated. The light…she couldn't decide if it was harsh or beautiful, warm or cold, menacing or….
"Weasley."
Her brow furrowed. Her name had been spoken, yet it didn't seem right. The voices had never named her before.
"Weasley!"
As suddenly as she had fallen asleep she awoke, her head jerking from the pillow of her arms. The whiteness had been replaced by the dim, yellow illumination of her cubicle, and the beautiful voices with that of her senior officer, Commander Alston. She stared drearily at him through lidded eyes as her brain scrambled to make the connection between reality and her existence. "Yes, sir?" She asked, words slurred with sleep.
His blue eyes seemed to cut right into her heart and she gulped, raising a hand to warily touch the copper wire birds' nest that was her hair.
"Another late night, Rose?" His tone, although gruff, was almost approving.
She squinted, glancing at the pile of papers she'd been sorting through just a few hours before. "I guess so sir."
His blue eyes narrowed over a graying, but neatly trimmed beard. "You look like something a hippogriff spat up. Good work."
Rose raised her eyebrows as she watched him walk away. "Thank you, Commander," she whispered, rubbing ink-stained hands over shadowed eyes. Back to work then. She looked around the office, hoping that no others had caught her snoozing. Thankfully, she had kept herself in the almost unknown corner cubicle, disguising her presence with piles of books and scrolls that rivaled a large library. On the walls she had stuck pictures of creatures; from moving film captures to vague engravings she had copied from books. Snarling mouths and glowing red eyes looked at her from every direction, and Rose smiled, naming them in her head like old friends.
It was, after all, her profession.
Her eyes returned to the notes she had taken the night before, and immediately her mood fell. Well, this was useless. She thought, brushing an irritated finger over the messy scrawl that summed up her all-night work party. Merlin, she could not even remember half of what she had written about. My mother always warned me that voluntary insomnia was not the secret to success.
Rose sighed and vanished the pile into the bottom of the filing cabinet behind her, unwilling to give up her work if she needed it for later. Her cousins had called it 'data hoarding' but Rose liked to think of it as stock piling. Someday those early-morning messes would be the key to a case, or the missing piece to a mystery. Now if she could only decipher her handwriting…
"Auror Rose?" A high-pitched, yet still masculine voice drew her attention to the opening of her cubicle. She did not recognize the man, who was weedy and tall with corn-stalk hair and big grey eyes. He jumped a little at her gaze and cleared his throat nervously. His clothes were in a pristine state, the uniform of a black over robe and a muggle suit and tie carefully pressed. It screamed rookie, they always tried the hardest. In his hand was a red folder. Another case. Rose closed her eyes briefly before putting on her best smile while she tried to pretend she did not look like something Fluffy had chewed and spit out.
"Yes Auror…" she squinted at his name engraved on his badge. "Claudius?"
He handed her the red folder, thick with parchment. "Auror Inspector Potter told me to give this to you."
Rose nodded, and she flipped through the pages. Werewolf. Again. She would once again have to write an appeal to the Minister to sanction a bill that would fix the price of Wolfsbane potion. This was getting ridiculous. "Thank you Claudius," she mumbled as an afterthought, her brain already spinning on how best she could recommend the team to deal with the situation. Several minutes went by until she realized Auror Claudius was still standing by her door. "Yes?" She asked, flinching her tone of irritation.
Claudius cleared his throat again, making his Adam's apple bob rather prominently. This kid is young. Rose thought. And I am only twenty-three.
"It's just…." He blushed and looked at his toes. "I was wondering….what it would take to get on your team?"
Her team? She was just an advisor. Rarely did she deal with the situation herself. That was left up to the jocks in the lower offices, or at worst, the Hit Wizards. Sure there was a group of Aurors she dealt with the most, preferring their style of work over others but…"I don't have a team."
"They say you're the best, dealing with dark creatures I mean. I would like to get into it. Magical Creatures was my best subject, see…and, well…" His blushed deepened.
"This isn't flobberworms and unicorns, Claudius. We deal with real, furry threats. The kinds with claws and teeth that bite. The kind of things that most wizards won't find in books out of the restricted section at Hogwarts." And other things…things only she knew about, but hadn't encountered. Things that were so old, she assumed were extinct. But there are always stories….She drove the thought away.
Dark creatures had always been Rose's fascination in school, and the 'dark' part had driven her to the Aurors rather than the Department of Regulation. Her high grades had driven her through the Academy, but when it came to actually practicing what she had learned…Rose had come to a brick wall. Apparently being related in some way to the Potters had its benefits and downsides. The downsides being detained from the front lines. No one wanted to risk the precious heir of a legacy to some stupid werewolf. So she researched, and let the big boys handle the dangerous doggies.
Looking at the kid, her cold, bitter heart seemed to defrost. "I'll put in a recommendation," she waved the red folder. "Werewolf. A good one to start with, we will see how you do."
He grinned and bowed in a way that spoke of his pure-blood heritage. Rose gesticulated him to go away and turned around in her chair, shaking his head. Twenty-three years old and already feeling ancient. What in Merlin's beard has this job done to me? What being Auror always does. The mentors tried to warn them during the academy, but they had been too green, too filled with stories of the old days with Death Eaters and glory, when Harry Potter had swept the Ranks to become Auror Commissioner at twenty-seven like Merlin reborn. They didn't realize how dark it was out there. How many shadows actually lurked beyond the walls of Hogwarts.
There she went again. Her mother always scolded her for being cynical. "Realistic." She would usually correct. But I wish I wasn't.
Feeling the need to pull her thoughts from a black place, Rose reopened the folder, looking harder at what her cousin, James, had gifted her. All the dark creatures' cases went through her, no matter how small. Not only was it a way to validate their eventual actions, but it also lent the brunt of the paperwork to her shoulders.
It was, as she had told Auror Claudius, a werewolf case. It sometimes happened that some poor witch or wizard would forget their Wolfsbane dose and go furry on one of their neighbors, but that was usually handled by the Regulation department. What attracted the Aurors were patterns; long-term cases where behavior didn't add up to the occasional accident.
A small, muggle town in Scotland had been apparently been plagued with child deaths by 'wild animal attacks.' The muggle authorities always liked to chalk in up to feral dogs, as if that made any sense. It was clearly a werewolf, but an unusual one at that. The victims were too similar to be generalized intentional attacks, where some psycho would hole themselves outside a home and then go crazy-with-fangs on a poor family until morning. No, this had happened over several months, where small girls between the ages of six and eight would disappear from their beds, leaving only bloody paw prints behind. Without waking the rest of the family, or breaking a window, or busting down the locked door.
"Merlin's balls," Rose grumbled, slapping the folder shut. "He's using Wolfsbane." It made her sick…thinking about how someone, no matter the shape of their face, would consciously choose to eat another human being. It also made him ten times more difficult to deal will. A normal werewolf could be controlled; fooling it like one would fool an animal into a trap. A murderous wolf with all of his cognitive functions was unprecedented.
Rose tried to ignore the spurt of glee in her gut when she realized she would have to take deal with this one. There was no way she could tell a team how to deal with a situation they had never met before with just a school-grade lecture. Rose would have there, in the line of fire in order to direct their actions. Rose gave into her excitement, and grinned. Uncle is not going to like this one.
"Absolutely not," Harry muttered, his emerald-green eyes glinting dangerously over his familiar round frames. His hair had faded gracefully into a dark, pepper grey, and the lines about his eyes were more from laughter than hardship. But Rose's uncle was not laughing at that moment.
Rose bit her lip in frustration, holding back a loud curse. James was leaning against the wall behind her, an easy grin frozen on his handsome face. Beside the brown hair, James had taken after closely to his mother. He had her lanky build and deep brown eyes, as well as her skill in hexes with a brilliant sense of humor. He had easily climbed his way through the ranks of the Aurors, making Auror Inspector at the age of twenty-four. He was the one who passed Creature Cases to Rose's expertise, and who she had asked for support when she proposed her decision to join the hunt that evening to the Auror Commissioner.
"It is not a negotiation," Harry cut in, as if sensing an argument brewing. "You are not allowed on the front lines."
"I need to be. I am the only witch here who could sufficiently deal with this situation."
"And how is that? What make you the only one who could deal with this?" Harry asked.
Rose opened her mouth to shoot back a reply, something clever, but the words would not come to her tongue. Why was she special? Her team was the best of the best when dealing with Dark Creatures, she had chosen and honed their skills herself, teaching them probably more facts on the things they would be hunting than they needed, or cared, to know. Surely a simple serial killing werewolf would be a small problem compared to vampires, dementors, and acromantulas.
I'm bored. Rose realized. She wanted the adventure the green rookie in her craved so much, feel the cutting edge of danger and the exhilaration that came with risking her life. I was just looking for an excuse to do something besides sit around and read. I am a Gryffindor, not a Ravenclaw. I am a soldier, not a researcher. Why can no one understand how bored I am? Three years Rose had camped out in her cubicle, learning everything she could on Dark creatures and passing the problems onto those who fixed them. Now the wells of curiosity had dried up…her resignation of her place fading to agitation. Rose just wanted to do something for once; and Uncle Harry had come to this conclusion, as always, five steps ahead of her.
"Exactly," Harry replied, "We had an arrangement when you took your position, Auror Sergeant Weasley, and we will not deviate from it despite your whims. I with authorize your team's mission tonight, see that you take no part in it beside the basic preliminaries. Your job."
Rose slammed the office door when she left, fuming. The cubicles quieted as the Aurors turned in their seats to look at her with same expressions of curiosity and bewilderment. Rose ignored them as she stomped down the enlarged room to her own cubicle.
James followed her, the grin falling from his face. He watched her as she mumbled under her breath, slamming folders and books shut before sliding heavily into her seat.
"Nice temper tantrum," he commented.
Rose glared up at him with her mother's chocolate-brown eyes. Everything about her was Hermione Granger, from the shape of her jaw to the slight build she had tried so hard to bulk up. Only the dark red hair spoke of any sort of Weasley in her. Too bad it had the tendency to curly into a messy bushy-ness.
James held out both his hands in defense. "You can't tell me it wasn't."
"I know," Rose sighed, hiding her face with her hands. "I need to stop this, James. I can't do…this anymore."
"I thought you liked research."
"I do, I do," Rose shook her head. "But it's all I do lately. I have used nothing I learned in the Academy, and it's all going to waste, all that effort and work because Uncle made some deal with Mum or Da."
"You don't know that. Maybe he thinks this is where you would be best."
"Where I will be safest you mean. James…kids years younger than me are being let into the field. Why not me?" She removed her hands and pleaded at him with her eyes. "Some help you were. You are in charge of the mission tonight. You are the only one who could find some sort of loophole in prison your father has built for me."
"Dramatic, that's what you are," James groaned. "Fine. But you are staying out of the line of fire. Behind the shields, do you understand? My arse is on the line if something happens to you."
"Merlin forbid something happen to your arse," Rose muttered as he walked away.
"What was that?" James called.
"Nothing!" She sang sweetly, staring at an etching of a werewolf from the 1700's tacked to the wall. Under her gaze the reddened eyes flared and its snout shifted with a suggestion of emotion. The wolf was almost…smiling at her.
A/N: This is my first story under this name, and my first cross-over. I have loved Harry Potter for a long time, but Supernatural is quite new to me. I would like to warn those who are reading this- it won't be a short-and-sweet ride. I like to build my characters as well as my plot, so it may take on the length of a medium-sized novel before I consider it completed. Thank you for reading. –SplashOfChaos