Harry's barn own landed on the ledge of Rose's balcony. She approached the owl and untied the twine that attached a roll of cream colored parchment to the bird's leg. The owl cocked its head to the side to observe the red head for a brief moment, she narrowed her eyes at the bird—tsssk, creepy little thing. She shook away her thoughts and focused back on the letter.
She took a breath and unrolled the parchment. As soon as she saw that Harry had sent the letter on his official Ministry paper dread filled her, she knew that something was wrong. He always sent letters to her on his own personal stationary. She broke the official red Ministry wax seal and began reading…
Rose,
There has been an emergency. We need to use your house as a safe house for a compromised undercover agent. I'm sorry for any inconvenience to you, but you live in the safest place I could think of. I am not sending this letter as your Uncle, but as an order from the Ministry. I hope you understand. Please send your reply as quickly as possible. I will be personally escorting the agent to your home.
British Minster of Magic,
Harry Potter
Rose immediately thought of Scorpius. She knew it was silly, there were at least one hundred agents in WIP—the chances that it would be Scorpius were slim to none. No, there is no way it could be Scorpius. Absolutely NO way….But what if it is him? What would I do? – her mind conjured thoughts more quickly than she could process them— Murder him, probably…Hug him? Cry? Fuck. Wait, he's at St. Mungo's? Is he hurt? Calm down Rose! You don't even know if it's him.
Burning tears threatened to spill down her face, but she willed them not to. A heavy feeling of panic ripped through her entire body. Her heart rate sped up frantically, a thin layer of perspiration appeared on her forehead, and her breath hitched in her throat. She felt like she might throw up. The rational part of Rose's brain told her that she needed to relax, it probably wasn't Scorpius— but, unfortunately for Rose, the over-thinking part of her brain always wins.
She ran inside and scribbled down her response on the closest piece of paper that she could find. It was a muggle receipt from the grocery store she had gone to the day before. There is no going back to yesterday. Even if it isn't Scorpius this is surely going to be big. I can feel it. She let the familiar feeling of her keen intuition wash over her. With a slight shutter of unexplained magic that coursed through her body she turned it over and wrote,
Harry,
Of course, I have opened the floo.
Rose Weasley
The note was simple and to the point. Of course she would be willing to open her home in the name of a Ministry crisis, it was her duty. She quickly pointed her wand at the stone hearth and said the spell to open the floo under her breath. Purple flames shot up and died down as quickly as they came. Realization dawned on Rose that Harry had not included in his letter when exactly she should be expecting them. As soon as her messaged reached him? Tomorrow?
She watched as the owl took flight with her letter through the open glass doorway. She stood as still as a Hogwarts stone gargoyle and watched until she could no longer see the bird in the distance—she needed to take the moment to catch her breath. Her throat, heart, and stomach felt tight—like something had twisted her insides into an elaborate knot.
Her mind immediately kicked into overdrive at the thought of hosting a guest in her home, a trait that her Mum would be please was passed onto her daughter. Glancing around her living room she assessed the state of her home. Everything was in place, of course, Rose was a clean freak. She made a mental checklist. She would need to put fresh sheets on the guest bed, clean towels, and make sure nothing personal was left out around the house. What would Scorpius think of where I live? What I look like now? Stop being silly, Rose. Damn intrusive thoughts.
Rose had a reoccurring fantasy of Scorpius showing up on her door step one day, like in the old time muggle war movies. She knew it was silly because a) she didn't have a door step because she lived on the side of a mountain, and b) surely Scorpius has moved on from whatever confusing thing they had in the past, if you could even call it a thing.
Get it together, do not let your emotions muddle your thinking. Get it together. Get it together. She repeated this mantra in her head until she had completely calmed down and her mind had cleared. She marched to the laundry room that was off of her bedroom. She preferred doing laundry and cleaning the muggle way, it was an anxiety reliever for her. She went through the motions of preparing for her unknown guest and instantly felt more relaxed.
She knew deep down that what she was really doing was avoiding the thoughts of Scorpius that the sudden mention of an undercover agent brought her. Over the past three years every time he intrusively popped into her head she would shove the thoughts aside. Suppressing these thoughts was the only way she knew how to handle them. If her mind lingered on the subject too long she would be thrown into a fit of memories that never failed to stir emotions so deep inside of her that they rarely had a chance to rear their ugly heads. She preferred these emotions to be buried, but now she was being forced to dust the cobwebs off of the furthest corners of her brain that she had not visited in a long time.
Memories violently flashed through her mind. Rose sat down on the edge of her king sized bed to steady herself. She was feeling disoriented. Her train of thought somehow ended up on the pink leather bound diary that she had kept during her time at Hogwarts and the year following her graduation. She hadn't taken it out to read or write since the day that Scorpius had come to her flat in London to tell her that he was leaving. In fact, the journal acted as a chronicle of every memory she had with him before then. This was precisely why it stayed hidden in a box at the top of her closet.
She crossed the room to her closet. With an unsteady hand she reached for the dusty shoe box on the uppermost shelf—pausing for a moment, unsure if she was ready to relive her past. She padded back to her bed with the box and sat down resolutely. The hot pink journal came to view as she carefully lifted the lid from the box. She cringed at her teenage self's choice of color. It summarized exactly how different she is now from the Rose that existed in the past. She had read an article once that said a wizard's body replaces each of it's cells with a new one every three years…which would mean that her body had replaced itself almost twice since she first touched ink to the pages of the journal. By the same logic, the body I have now is not a body that has ever been touched by Scorpius Malfoy... This thought made her stomach turn sour.
She sat for a moment with her hands resting on the top of the leather bound pages, her eyes were closed and she was breathing slowly—as if she could absorb what was contained within the pages in this way. Her hands worked to untie the leather string that held the cover closed. She turned to the first page. Her sloppy young hand writing covered the page in blue ink. She reflected on how her 16 year old hand writing was large, loopy, and slanted—but the current 23 year old Rose's hand writing is small, neat, and straight.
November 15th 2021 was the date at the top of the page. The beginning of her fifth year. Rose sucked in a deep breath and began to read…
November 15th, 2021
OMG, OMG, OMG…What did I get myself into? Last night after the party in the Gryffindor common room I decided to take a drunken after hours walk around the castle. Who did I bump into? You guessed it…The one and only beautiful, moody, blonde— Scorpius Malfoy. By my first look at him I knew that he was drunk too.
"Where's Courtney?" I asked him sharply.
"Is that your business, Weasley?" He snapped. After considering it for a moment, letting his drunk brain take over, he glanced at me and said, "But if you must know…we've gotten into an argument". For some reason this made me feel delighted.
"Oh? Were you not good enough in bed for her then, Malfoy?" I eyed him up and down as pointedly as possible.
He snorted in reply, "Actually, it's quite the opposite…" His grey eyed pierced me as he evaluated the short black dress that I put on for the party. His gaze unsettled something deep inside of me.
This is when I knew that I was a goner. He looked so sexy standing in the dark corridor that it sent my teenage hormones blazing. Scorpius and I have always had a bit of sexual tension. It has never been seen through because Courtney, his girlfriend, constantly hangs on his side...Not to mention, my cousin Albus is his best friend.
The next thing I knew he had pushed himself off of the wall and sauntered towards me. My stomach did back flips as I tried to calm my nerves. His hand brushed a rouge strand of red hair out of my face. This simple gesture made me swoon.
"What are you intentions?" I asked haughtily, pretending that his close proximity did not send waves of electricity through my limbs.
"Intentions…?" He drawled, cocking his head to the side. "Who said I have any intensions?"
"Well, for one thing, you are standing in front of me with a look on your face like you've already undressed me in your head," I retorted bravely…but I had a feeling he could hear the waver in my voice that gave away my weakness to him.
He continued to step closer as I stepped backwards with each of his steps, until my back reached the wall behind me. I swallowed loudly, knowing very well that I should put a stop to whatever was about to happen. He had only said that they were fighting, not that they had broken up…I didn't particularly like Courtney, but I also didn't want him to cheat on her.
Any inhibitions that I should have had in that moment had gone out the window with the last shot of fire whisky that I had taken before leaving the party.
We became a tangle of limbs and passion as he kissed me. It was like nothing I have ever felt before. I have kissed a few boys, but it had NEVER felt even close to this. My entire body ached for him. My pulse felt too rapid to be healthy and an intense heaviness settled in my heart and stomach. He teased me by lightly biting my bottom lip until I gave him further access to my mouth. After we kissed for the next minute he rested his head for a moment in the crook on my neck to catch his breath. It felt like an oddly intimate gesture for a drunken late night random snog session in a deserted corridor.
Then suddenly he stopped and a void was suddenly created in my heart that I had a feeling would never be full again. He pulled back and looked at me harshly, slowly taking steps to put distance between us…like he suddenly came to and remembered that he still has a girlfriend, and that this was wrong.
"Shit…Courtney…I …I….I can't do this, Rose. Fuck!" he muttered. I felt the sting of tears fill my bottom lids. Betrayal, rejection…it hurt, badly. He turned and hurried down the corridor…leaving me there to feel like a complete idiot.
Jerk. Big FUCKING jerk. I feel completely humiliated! I will never recover from this, how will I ever look at him again? Bloody bastard, he was only using me because he and Courtney were in a fight and it's his sick idea of getting back at her….but….he called me Rose.
Rose read the last paragraph through the tears that had formed in her eyes. She huffed a big sigh and fell backwards to lay on her bed as conflicting emotions tore her soul into two. She felt bad for the 16 year old version of herself. The girl who had written those words had no idea what was about to unfold in their remaining years at Hogwarts.
In that moment she felt like she was simultaneously experiencing every emotion on the spectrum of emotions that Scorpius had ever made her feel—she clutched the diary to her chest as one lonely tear rolled down her cheek. Eight goddamn years later and I'm still crying over this bastard…We never had a chance to make it really work. No, that's not right. We had a million chances, we just happened to fuck up every single one of them.
Her stray tear was replaced quickly by seething anger when her rationality finally took over. Three years and he never bothered to find a single way to contact me…and after looking back on all of these years it is clear that he was only using me out of convenience of a good lay—excellent lay, if I do say so myself. And I do. Shit, focus! I am not thinking about sex with Malfoy, absolutely not. Those days are over. I've put all of this time and effort into accepting that I would never see him again—and that's exactly what is going to happen. But, if I were to see him now he would surely be moved on…no one can stay in love with someone after three years of no contact…right?
Her train of thought was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a crack, signaling that someone had arrived by floo…and then a second crack. Shit, they're here so soon. Wiping the tear from her face she slowly stood from the bed, shoved the journal between her mattresses, and walked toward the living room. Sheepishly she rounded the corner and took in the two figures standing in her living room.
Her heart stopped for a fraction of a second, and then began to wildly pound against her chest cavity as if it were attempting to leap from her body—it's him. But then again, it had always been him.
A/N: Thank you to the 1 Reviewer and 3 follows from the first chapter. I hope you like this one, I'm updating so soon because I can't seem to get this story out of my head long enough to stop writing it. Please leave a review if you like it! It will definitely help motivate me to keep going! Do you like the flash backs of their Hogwarts past from her journal? I think this will play out to be an interesting story...I have some ideas! Keep reading :)
