Rose

In a world so ordinary that the extraordinary was considered forbidden, he happened to step out of the rules of normalcy and before he knew it, everything that he had ever known was now different because he was different because he had met her. An AU Muggle!verse Scorose fic.

Hello. Good day. I am your narrator for today. Now you might be wondering who I am and why someone like you should listen to someone like me, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is the story that I wish to narrate to you today—the story that I want you to know about.

But I suppose I am obligated to tell at least the most basic information regarding my identity just so I can convince you to read this. Well, for starters, I am a seventeen-year-old boy. I live in a small town whose name doesn't matter because you wouldn't have heard of it anyway; I go to school in said town and I am basically just your average, ordinary, next-door-neighbour sort of fellow. Honest.

Now, I suppose I should mention a little more about this town I live in because it is the location where this story takes place. My town is a very small, quaint, typical little thing with tarred streets, florists and shoemakers around the corner, barely a car or two as most of us prefer to walk or bike, a few enthusiastic joggers here, a couple old ladies there—yeah, that's pretty much all you need to know about the town I live in.

It is a very ordinary place where everybody lives ordinary lives and normalcy is the norm that we follow.

Nobody does anything that is uncommon in our town. We fit into the category of a stereotypical town that people write about in poems and children's stories. And we're rather proud about it. I hope I have made it clear how completely ordinary we—and everything in our town—are.

Now for the start of my story:

This is a rather dramatic start, both for you and me because I'm not used to drama and you're not used to me.

So one dreary afternoon, while I sat in my seat in my class in school, a boy suddenly came sprinting into the classroom and began to hurriedly narrate a very exaggerated tale of a girl disappearing.

Of course this brought on excitement—nothing ever happened in this town of ours. Everyone wanted to know who, what, when, where, why, how and every little snippet of information that the poor boy could possibly give them. Everybody was talking all at once, very excited, very nervous, very curious, but the teacher arrived soon enough and sent the students off to their seats and lessons began.

Skipping over to when the actual story begins: I was on my way home after school when it started raining. Rain wasn't uncommon in our town, but that particular day it was strange. The rain was coming down harder than usual and I belatedly realised that I didn't have my umbrella on me. I never forget my umbrella. Nobody ever forgets their umbrella. Not in a town like ours.

At that point, even as I ducked my head and jogged slightly, I should have been able to sense that the damage had already been done. The unchanged, every day normalcy had already been irreversibly altered. But I didn't. I continued to jog.

Since I was already soaking wet from the sudden rain – which wasn't sudden at all as I mentioned already—I decided that instead of waiting for it to stop, I would take a different route than my usual one so I would reach home faster.

That was already my second chance to notice the change. But again I didn't. If there was one thing that a completely ordinary life fails to teach you, it was the ability to harness your sixth sense. I didn't believe in a sixth sense and so I would think my ignorance was justified.

The route I took led past a small playground where the neighbourhood children came together to play every evening. I used to play there when I was younger, but not anymore. It wasn't common for someone my age to hang around a park at any time of day. It wasn't normal. So nobody did it.

And that was my third and final chance to try and undo the damage that had been done to my usual, unchanging ways. But I still didn't realise it. For some unfathomable reason, I had decided to walk around the park.

Now don't mistake me, I'm not the nostalgic kind. So my reason for choosing to walk around the park was completely illogical. But I did it anyway. And as I came around the corner, I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye.

If my town were a fascist state, and we were punished for doing things that were out of the ordinary, I would already have gotten a life sentence by then. I had already undone three of the usual things I did and now I was undoing the last one.

If I hadn't forgotten my umbrella; If I hadn't taken a different route home; If I hadn't decided to walk around the park; If I hadn't decided to encourage my curiosity. Only if. Then nothing that happened after that would have ever taken place.

But time is a constraint nobody can change. Time is unchangeable. It is that which lets the ordinary remain ordinary. But time does not reach out to anything and help it follow through with the normalcy of life. Time isn't a dictator. It lets us do what we choose to do.

And at that moment, I chose to walk into the park and towards the bushes where I thought I'd seen something or someone disappear. I probably should have been afraid. Or at least nervous. But I was neither.

Another drawback of mindlessly doing the same thing all day, every day is that it slowly dries out the wavelength of human emotions. Everything is a dull shade closer to the grey end of the spectrum. Nothing is vibrant. Nothing is interesting. Everything is ordinary.

So I dauntlessly pulled back the branches and waded through the wet foliage. I didn't know that there was a forest behind the park. Nobody knew there was a forest behind the park. Not unless they did what I was doing then, and broke away from everything they strictly followed and believed in and led their lives by. The same way I had followed them—at least until that point.

I finally reached a small clearing. This is where I will take a moment to pause in my tale to ascertain a point that you probably should have grasped by now. But if you are as mundane as I was in this story, then I shall explain once again.

I lived in an ordinary town with ordinary people who lived ordinary lives. Now, you must be wondering why I am repeating this again. I am repeating it because I think you haven't quite grasped the essence of the point I am trying to make. You see everything was very simple to us. We did things by the book. We followed a routine. We lived by the rules. We never delved into the forbidden or that which was strange and bizarre and extraordinary.

You must understand that people like us viewed the world from behind a filter. Everything was a soft, dull, lazy hue. Nothing stood out. You must understand that we did not live in a monochrome world. It probably would have been better if we did because then everything wouldn't have been closer to grey, if they were closer to black and white.

Now back to my story.

In the clearing I saw a garden. It wasn't like any garden I had ever seen. We weren't lacking gardens or greenery in our town but all the flowers and plants were chosen in such a way that they complemented our ordinary existence. Nothing was bizarre or exotic. So you may be able to understand my surprise when I had stumbled into a rose garden.

There were so many roses everywhere. There were roses that were the whitest of white, there were roses that were redder than red, and there were roses that were dark in the centre and light as the petals grew out. I had never seen a rose that wasn't a soft shade of pink or a dull, greenish white. The pink roses in that garden were blindingly bright. They were spectacular.

I walked through the garden feeling a sudden sense of loss. You wouldn't understand why I would seem lost. It wasn't because I was in an unknown place, it was because I had diverged from the ordinary. I had taken a turn away from a path that only ran straight. I had chosen to do something different. And that in itself was life-changing to someone who lived in an extraordinarily un-extraordinary town like mine.

I heard rustling behind me and followed it. My heart was beating faster than it usually did. It was unnatural to be excited but I was excited. I made my way through the bushes and leaves and branches and emerged out into a clearing—only to find myself on what looked like the front lawn of an extravagant house. Even our picture books didn't depict houses as big or fancy as the one before me.

My curiosity burning like an everlasting flame, I slowly approached the house. Although it was large and beautiful, with intricate carvings and creepers growing along the walls, for some reason it seemed to be shrouded by desolation and loneliness. I could understand. Of course something so strangely beautiful had no place in our ordinary town. There was a flutter of what sounded like the folds of a dress and I looked to my side.

And there she was. In a dress that was as blue as our grey sky wasn't, with hair as red as the core of our wood fire wasn't, with skin as luminous as the sun that shone through our clouds wasn't. If there was one word to describe her, it would be breath-taking.

She frowned at me and I noticed that she held a red rose in her hand. Already having come this far fearlessly, I stepped towards her with my hands raised, to show that I meant no harm. Something about her was captivating and I wanted to know who she was. I needed to know who she was. I took another step closer and she raised the rose as though it was a gun. I smiled, confused, and she blinked.

Note that this is when my life changed forever more.

Waves of pure energy swirled around her like a hurricane. It was a terrifyingly beautiful sight and I watched, rooted to the spot. She walked towards me and I stood very still as she came and placed her hand on my chest. For one second it felt like my heart had stopped and then I felt the same energy that swirled around her surge through me.

I gasped, bewildered. She smiled wryly and stepped back, offering me the flower. And as I watched, all the colours seemed to seep back into the world as though a veil had been lifted from my eyes. As I watched, everything turned vibrant and vivid and brilliant. And as I watched, this girl who was believed to have disappeared only earlier today, came up to me, grabbed my wrist, and said,

"I am Rose and welcome to the world of the extraordinary."

This was actually genuinely painful for me to write and this is completely different from how I write normally so some constructive criticism in the review will really help, thanks.

Written for the final round of The Sacred Stones Competition in DAII

The Challenge: Wind

Required: Cloudstone Circle(10 GOLD)

First To Complete: 10 Mana - Best Story in Wind: 25 Mana

Write an AU of below 2000 words in which your OTP are muggles.

My count is 1,952 KILLING MEH