Rose had inherited her mother's love of books. After graduating from Hogwarts, her first job had been working at Flourish and Blott's. She had started stocking shelves, despite her father's concerns that working in a shop was selling herself short. Her mother had agreed and had even offered to try to get her a position in her old department at the Ministry if she wanted to start in politics. Rose hadn't cared about either of their worries; she just wanted to be around books. She started to understand their anxieties, though, when back to school season had returned at the end of summer. The harried faces of the parents with long lists of books to buy, and the looks of boredom on the faces of their children who seemed more intent on heading to Uncle George's store than excited about their upcoming studies made her realize just how horrible the weeks leading up to the start of term at Hogwarts could be.
She was pleased when she was promoted to a book buyer after the school rush was over. She was sent out to scour Muggle used-book shops and jumble sales to find the kinds of books that the original owners didn't really understand. The first time she had found a grimoire disguised as an old Julia Child cookbook and brought it back to the shop she had known that she had been right to turn down her mother's offer. Book hunting, restoring magical knowledge to her community was her joy. She loved being out in book shops throughout the Midlands trying to find the next treasure. Which was how she found herself hunched over between two bookshelves in a back corner of some tiny, dusty second-hand shop, trying not to gag.
She had just placed The Hedgewitch's Compendium (nothing but a collection of poor poetry) back on the shelf when she saw a book with a grainy black and white image of people whose blank eyes stared out of emaciated faces. She knew very little about Muggle history, despite Granny and Grandad trying to interest Hugo and her in their family heritage during trips to see them every summer. But something about the picture on the front of the book made her want to look closer. And then she saw it. Just where her mother's Mudblood scar was placed, these people had numbers.
She opened the book and started to thumb through it, thinking about all she had read at Hogwarts about the Second Wizarding War (always wondering why her mother wouldn't talk about it, always trying to understand her mother). The librarian had always looked at her as if there was something wrong with her for checking out the books, but no matter how much she read she couldn't understand why adults had left children to fight a war. It made no sense.
As she paged through the book in her hands, she was horrified. She stopped at another image of the tattoos forced on the people in concentration camps and traced the numbers as she had always wanted to trace the letters on her mother's arm, remembering how frequently her mother pulled her sleeves down to hide the scar from everyone around her. On certain days when Mum was quieter than normal, even through the long sleeves Rose would catch her mother faintly tracing the letters. Rose's eyes would search out her father, who almost always had a pained look on his face when he saw what Hermione was doing. Nothing was ever said. Mum never talked about how she got that scar, and even though she talked to Dad about almost everything, she knew better than to ask about this. She finally figured out from her Hogwarts extracurricular reading why he looked so grim and she looked so thoughtful as she traced the scar. That history book she had found in the Hogwarts library had made also made her gag. She had made Hugo read it, and the pained expression he had when he returned the book to her somehow helped. It was good for both of them who had lived through those repeated silences to better understand their source.
She wondered if the children of the Muggle camp survivors were as silent as she was. If they had dealt with their parents' silence as she and Hugo had. She slipped the book into the basket she carried and moved slowly to the front of the store.
(Repost for formatting)