Summary: Rose and Scorpius' first New Years Eve together was interesting to say the least. [Scorose]
A/N: Another year gone! Hope you keep your resolutions
Disclaimer: My initials are not JKR
We Get Together
To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan and not quite enough time
~Leonard Bernstein
Rose had been waiting for this for months. She'd carefully planned out every second to make sure everything was perfect. Absolutely everything needed to be perfect. If it wasn't, the evening wouldn't be special and the past months of anticipation and preparation would have been for nothing. Everything had to go as planned.
She stared at the clock as it ticked away the last few seconds of her confinement. Her shift would be over in forty seconds and then she'd finally be able to implement her plan and achieve perfection. She'd purposefully agreed to do all the paperwork for her floor in an attempt to avoid the unpredictability inherent in the Healer profession. The last thing she needed was someone to come in requiring her attention and throw off her schedule.
As a result, she sat behind stacks of paper in a tiny office designed for that purpose, but rarely utilized. Most people avoided the room because it was small and dank. The room's underutilization was perfect for Rose; no one would come looking for her in it. She happily traded light, space, and clean air for the peace of mind the small room brought.
Finally, the minute hand struck the nine. 3:45. Her shift was officially over. Rose took a few seconds to file the work she had completed, leaving the large stack of incomplete work on the small desk. She then grabbed her white coat and prepared to leave the odd sanctuary of the small office.
She was not home free quite yet. She still had to cross the busy floor, collect her belongings, and exit St. Mungos. There was still plenty of opportunity for her to get dragged into something and thrown off track of her carefully planned schedule.
Rose took a deep breath and exited the dank room. The myriad of sounds common to hospitals met her ears. She heard spells being cast, coughing noises, occasional screams, the banging and clanging of potion pots and vials, and the constant hum of chatter. The sounds egged her on, moved her along faster and faster. The volume meant the floor was busy. They would be looking for all the hands they could get, and Rose would not, for once, be one of those hands.
When she reached the Healer's lounge without getting waylaid, she breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she would actually achieve the perfection she so desperately craved. The cubby that held her belongings –a change of clothes, her bag, some books for research, and a pair of less sensible shoes- was across the room. All she had to do was collect her things and leave.
She was only a few steps from the cubby when everything came crashing down around her. A harangued Healer named Joshua poked his head into the lounge and spotted her.
"Weasley!" he called out, "we desperately need you. Massive doxy attack at a New Years party in Little Whinging. Twenty-five victims, possibly more en route. We need all hands on deck." Joshua then disappeared from sight, completely unaware of the fact that he had just ruined Rose's evening.
When she finally got her small flat in the center of Canterbury, she didn't even bother with the ruse of opening her front door with a key. Instead, she pulled out her wand and performed an unlocking charm, International Statute of Secrecy be damned. She didn't care if muggles saw her perform magic; all she cared about was the fact that she was desperately behind on her schedule for the evening.
Dealing with doxy bites was not difficult; the hospital always kepi a significant stock of the anti-venom. However, when nearly fifty people arrived with bites in an already busy emergency floor, it was a time consuming process. Rose had to deal with Healer's being taken off the doxy case to deal with more pressing matters. As a result, she was often the only Healer treating all forty-seven patients.
It took her over an hour to administer the anti-venom and ensure everyone was stable and not adversely reacting to either the bite or the antidote. Once every last doxy bite victim had either been released from the hospital or moved to the second floor, creature-induced injuries, for continued observation , Rose was finally allowed to leave.
She'd checked the clock as she walked out of St. Mungos. It read 5:28. She was over an hour and a half behind schedule. She'd never have time to execute her plan exactly as she'd wanted. She'd either have to speed up the pace of her plan, or drop non-essentials.
Rose pushed her front door open and fell into her flat. The bags of groceries she'd been carrying fell from her arms and threatened to spill across the floor. Worried about the fragile ingredients she'd purchased. Rose speedily cast an immobilization charm. With her groceries frozen in the air, Rose took a moment to recollect herself and shut her door. She'd also checked for any nosy neighbours and luckily found none. A Ministry inquiry would certainly ruin the evening.
Once Rose was all together again, she went to collect her bags and gently placed them on the counter. The evening and night was so special, and so carefully planned out, because it was the first New Years Eve that Rose would get to spend entirely with her boyfriend of several years, Scorpius.
Up until the previous year, Rose and Scorpius had been forced to spend most of New Years Eve apart. Societal pressures had forced them to hide their relationship and meet in secret. Hectic careers and familiar obligations had limited the times they could meet. To combat this, they had agreed to at least always meet on New Years Eve, even if it was only for a few short hours.
Last year that all changed. Both had been held up at their respective family parties and, as a result, revealed their relationships to their families. Since that day, the pair had moved in together and spent a significantly larger amount of time together. Despite that, New Year's Eve still held a special, symbolic place in their hearts and they'd agreed to make this New Year's Eve, their first full one, extra special.
As Rose unpacked her groceries and went over everything she still needed to do and the amount of time she had until Scorpius got off work, she felt that the evening would be extra special because she was going to have a heart attack.
'No! No! No! No! No!' she screamed in her head as she looked through all her cupboards for the umpteenth time. 'I cannot have forgotten half the ingredients!' The evidence she was currently faced with said that she had.
In an attempt to make the evening different, Rose had decided to try her hand at cooking. Normally, either Scorpius cooked or they ate take out. Rose was not a cooker; she'd often screw up even the simplest of recipes. Yet, she'd thought that the reward of Scorpius' surprise would make up for all the issues she would undoubtedly face.
She'd asked her Gran for her lamb stew recipe, a favourite of Scorpius' and had planed to prepare it for dinner. Now, however, she'd only gotten half the lamb meat she'd needed and forgotten the carrots, celery, and several key herbs. She didn't have enough time to head out and buy them. So she'd just have to improvise those missing ingredients. It wouldn't be perfect, far from it in fact, but at that point in her disastrous evening, all she was shooting for was complete.
Resigned to her new fate, Rose began preparing dinner, improvising ingredients when she did not have them. She added everything in to a pot of boiling water and then set a timer for half an hour. She knew that her stew would not be anywhere close to what her grandmother made. She just hoped Scorpius would like it.
A ding alerted Rose to the completion of her stew. She quickly raced from the sitting room into the kitchen. She'd spent the stew's cooking time attempting to clean up the room. It was covered in old take out containers, Christmas gifts and torn wrapping paper, and medical textbooks. By the time the cooking timer sounded, she'd only managed to throw out the trash and moved her textbooks to the bedroom. She was only halfway through whipping down the surfaces, and internally promising to clean it more often.
Despite the half done job, Rose changed her focus to dinner. She quickly moved to the stewing pot and lifted the lid.
Her heart dropped.
What was in the pot looked absolutely nothing like her grandmother's stew. It was a thick consistency, with only a few floating potatoes. It was also an unappetising brown-green colour. Hesitantly, Rose reached for a spoon to taste the strange concoction in the pot. She took the smallest amount she could and very reluctantly put it in her mouth. Immediately, she spat it out.
Somehow, whatever was in the post tasted exactly like sewer. It was absolutely disgusting. Dinner was ruined. Her improvisation of ingredients had mixed together in a most unappetizing way and resulted in a truly disgusting concoction.
Not having the skills of the knowhow to fix it, Rose simply vanished it from the pot. She then turned back to the cupboards, trying to think of something she could make quickly out of the few ingredients she had left. The possibilities were slim. All that she had was a potato, a quarter box of pasta, flour, sugar, and a can of steamed tomatoes.
She was staring into the cupboards, hoping inspiration would hit her, when she heard the sound of the front door opening. She froze and her heart bottomed out. Scorpius was home and she was not even close to being ready.
Dinner was not made. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and partially used ingredients. The living room was still covered in take out residue and dust. She hadn't showered yet. And, to top it all off, she was still in her Healer's scrubs.
She had planned to do everything before Scorpius got home. Her original plan, with leaving work on time and getting home by 4:15, had enough time to do it all. But all the set backs she'd experienced that night had eaten into her time and left her with barely enough to even do half of what she wanted.
Scorpius walked into the kitchen; Rose knew he'd been expecting a clean space and a delicious dinner. The fact that what he got was an absolute mess with no food devastated her. She couldn't look at his reaction, couldn't handle his disappointment. Instead, she looked down at the floor and pushed passed him toward the bedroom.
She closed and locked the door behind her, then slid down it. Her rear hit the ground with a small smack. Rose sat against the door and sobbed, mourning the complete and utter destruction of her perfect evening.
Scorpius stood in the kitchen for several seconds after Rose's abrupt exit, simply taking in the scene before him. The kitchen looked like a war zone. Dirty pots, mixing bowls, chopping boards, wooden spoons, and plates and bowls spilled from the sink and across the nearby counters. Non-usable ends of ingredients, leaves and stems, lay scattered across the island cooking space. Random items lay on the floor.
In the middle of the room, amongst the ample carnage, sat a gleaming stewing pot. He couldn't smell anything, but that didn't deter him. Surely all this mess had resulted in something. He crept across the floor, careful not to step on anything and grind it in to the tile. When he finally got to the pot, he lifted the lid, peered inside, and found it completely empty.
"Rose?" he asked gently, his ear pressed against the door listening. He could hear her sobbing. "What's wrong?"
"Everything!" she shrieked before continuing to sob even harder.
"Everything?" Scorpius continued, his tone as gentle and empathetic as possible, "what do you mean 'everything'?" Scorpius was very confused. He'd expected to come home and find Rose on the couch doing paperwork or reading magical medical journals to improve her skill. What he had found, their kitchen a mess and Rose upset and locked in the bedroom, had thrown him. Now, he was trying his best to make sense out of everything.
"My pl-pl-plan for this e-e-evening! To-tonight was supposed to be p-p-perfect, but everything fell a-a-apart. D-d-dinner is ruined! The flat's a mess! I-I-I'm still in my scrubs! No-no-nothing is done!" Rose continued to sob. Slowly, an image started forming in his mind.
"Why did tonight have to be perfect?" he asked, trying to fill in his picture with a few last details. He knew today was New Year's Eve, their special day. He knew it was the first they'd get to spend entirely together. He knew they'd been talking about it being a special night. But that was where his image got blurry.
"It's-it's-it's our f-f-f-f-first New Years together! It's a su-su-super special night and I wa-wa-wanted it to be p-p-perfect! I'd made d-d-dinner and was going to cl-cl-clean! No-no-nothing is done!"
"Oh, Rose!" Scorpius called, finally understanding. Scorpius had thought that simply being together for the entire night made it special. Rose obviously thought the night needed to be extra-special and had tried, and apparently failed, to make it that way. "Just spending the night with you is special enough. Come out. We'll clean the condo together and order take out. the night can still be perfect."
The other side of the door was quite for several seconds, and Scorpius thought he'd succeeded in convincing Rose to come out. He heard shuffling and took a step back from the door, waiting for Rose. The door didn't open. Puzzled, Scorpius returned to pressing his ear against the door. He heard the sound of springs compressing, signalling Rose had just climbed into bed.
"I just want to go to bed. I've had a really crappy day," she finally spoke. Scorpius sighed in defeat, then turned back to the rest of the flat, an idea forming in his mind.
Rose's eyes fluttered open; an absolutely amazing smell wafted into the darkened room and filled her nose. She slowly sat up and stretched out her slightly stiff muscles. A quick glance to the clock on the bedside table informed her that she'd dozed off for the better part of an hour. She hadn't meant to fall asleep initially. She'd just planned on stewing for a little bit, maybe reading a book to help calm her down, and then head back out and try and salvage the evening.
However, almost as soon as she'd placed her head on the pillow her eyelids dropped closed and she drifted off. All the stress she'd felt in planning and attempting to make the evening perfect had exhausted her. Now that most of the stress was gone, the exhaustion took over and dragged her down into sleep.
She wasn't complaining though. Getting the stress and exhaustion off her shoulders and out of her system had made her feel a lot better. In fact, she even started to realise that she had grossly over-reacted to her failure. As she slowly got out of bed, wanting to investigate the source of the amazing smell, she promised herself to let go of her need for perfection and just enjoy the evening as is.
She shuffled across the bedroom floor and hesitantly opened the door. She'd made an absolute fool out of herself when Scorpius got home, acting like a melodramatic drama queen. It wasn't who she normally was, and she felt absolutely terrible about it. As a result, she sheepishly made her way out of the bedroom.
Instantly, the most delicious smell enveloped her. She quickly looked to the kitchen and found herself taken completely off guard. She'd expected to see the absolutely horrific mess she'd left, dirty pots and pans and garbage everywhere. Instead, she found a completely cleaned kitchen with a large stewing pot on the stove. Almost as if in a trance, Rose moved towards the pot. When she reached it, she lifted the lid and was met with the full force of the delicious smell from earlier. Sitting in the pot, the exact right colour it should be, was her Gran's lamb stew.
"How? What? How?" she asked, completely confused and taken aback.
"I made the stew," a voice said from behind. Rose turned around and saw Scorpius standing in the sitting room, his hands sheepishly shoved in his pockets. "I saw the recipe on the counter and figured that's what you'd been making. So I got the ingredients and put it all together. I also cleaned while it cooked."
Rose smiled at him and slowly made her way forwards, closing the gap. She then wound her arms around him, pulled him towards her, and kissed him.
"It's perfect," she spoke, smiling up at him. He smiled back down at her. They then broke apart and moved to get some stew. The rest of the night, they sat together on the couch and listened to the New Year's Eve show on the wireless. And for both Rose and Scorpius, it was the perfect evening because they spent it together.
The End
A/N: Hope you all had a fantastic New Years Eve!