Battlescars
Disclaimer: As before.
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Chapter 2: Hugo & Rose
Their mother was perfect, Hugo and Rose thought as they looked at her. She wasn't beautiful like their Aunt Fleur but her flaws harmonised and humanised her.
Their father felt the same, Rose could tell. Their parents were one of those couples who argued frequently, but were happier arguing with each other than agreeing with anyone else. Her father would listen to her mother talk at him as though her voice was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Her mother was brilliant too. The whole family agreed. Both her Dad and Uncle Harry freely acknowledged that they wouldn't have passed classes without her. When she was younger, Rose was taught to read by her mother. At some point, she and Hugo realised the sole blemish on their mother, the faded red marks across her arm, was lettering. One day, she and Hugo traced it. Their mother snatched her arm away like she had been burned.
'No!' she screamed, loud enough and with such pain to bring their father running and promptly throw them out of the room.
Later, much later, their father called them downstairs. Rose looked around. Their mother wasn't home.
'Hugo, Rose,' their father said. 'I have to tell you about something very grown up. You need to listen to me. It's the story of how Mummy, Daddy and Uncle Harry and spent what should have been their last year at Hogwarts together.'
Rose knew some of this story even at eight years old; her mummy, daddy and Uncle Harry had run away and defeated an evil wizard named Voldy. That's what Grandma Molly always said when people stared at her family. Well, she never said the name of the wizard, but daddy always called him that.
Her daddy was speaking again. 'When we were hiding from Voldy, an evil witch captured us.'
Hugo and Rose gasped, suitably impressed.
But their father wasn't finished. 'While we were prisoners, Uncle Harry and I were in a dungeon. But your mother,' and he paused, breathing heavily, 'your mother was taken away by the evil witch, and the evil witch hurt her. That's what those marks on your mother's arm are.'
'What happened to the evil witch?' Hugo asked.
Their daddy grinned. 'Grandma Molly killed her.'
'Grandma Molly?' Rose said astonished.
'The evil witch tried to kill your Aunt Ginny,' their father said.
Rose, who was just old enough to recognise her grandmother's protectiveness laughed, but quickly stopped when she noticed her father had become serious again.
'The marks on your mother's arm spell out a word,' he said. 'The word is a filthy, disgusting word. If you ever, in your entire lives, say that word in this family's hearing and especially to your mother, you will no longer be welcome in this family. You are both old enough to know what an Unforgivable is; this word is unforgivable in this family.'
At the time, Rose and Hugo had nodded their terrified obedience and scurried away. As she grew up and read more of the story that made their family famous, Rose understood why her father had been so severe that day. She never touched that part of her mother's arm again.
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