Just A Typical Weasley Christmas, Right?: Chapter Four

Thank you again for continuing on with this story especially if you reviewed, followed, or favorited! It always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I get an email alert or a review.

Quote of the Post: "You're just as sane as I am." -Luna Lovegood

Disclaimer: Sadly, I'm not the amazing Jk Rowling. But a girl can wish, right?

Without further ado please enjoy!

Athena Turns Into A Popsicle

After a few minutes, I heard several footsteps racing up the steps towards my room. I smiled into the carpet. Phase Two was starting off beautifully. I remained in my position; face down on the floor, as I eavesdropped on the conversation commencing outside the door.

"I'm going to kill him, I swear I'll kill him," I heard Domi say furiously. I could hear her pacing vehemently outside the door, scheming about how to murder my fiancé.

"I'd gladly join you," I heard another voice agree. Lucy, I think. That was rather surprising; Lucy was usually rather peaceful, well unless you offended Lysander, then you'd be in deep hippogriff dung. (Or well, as peaceful as us Weasley/Potters get.)

"Look, I'm mad at Scorp too, but I think that Rose needs comfort more than anything. So I think that if any of you can't control your tempers then you should head back down the stairs, and if Rose does decide to kill him then we'll gladly come and get you," I heard the voice of reason. Alice. It was times like this that I was incredibly glad to have her as a best friend. She was probably one of the only ones that could talk some sense into us Weasley/Potters when we were on a rampage. I heard several people grumble before walking down the stairs. After that I heard the door open as Lily and Alice entered.

"Rose!" They screamed as they saw my pitiful state. My hair was a wild mass, my body a limp heap on the carpet. Alice tried to roll me over, but I wouldn't give. My body racked with sobs as tears poured down my face. They weren't entirely fake either. You see this was the exact sort of pain I was trying to avoid earlier. However, most of it was an act, I simply over dramatized my real hurt, which actually made my act rather convincing.

Ali continued trying to roll me over but to no avail. She finally stopped, exasperated, but then she recruited Lily's help and eventually they rolled me over.

"How could he?" I whispered, hurt. However, I wasn't talking about Scorp like Alice and Lily seemed to think, I was talking about Al. I really didn't understand why he would do this. As far as I knew, Al fully supported mine and Scorp's relationship. So I really didn't get his motive.

"Yeah, he said some pretty hurtful things back there," Alice said. I did this weird half laugh half sob thing.

"Yeah, he did, but I did too. I didn't mean for things to escalate so quickly, I never-I never," I sobbed. Alice and Lily pulled me into a group hug, just letting me get it all out.

"Oh Merlin, what if he never forgives me?" I asked, completely horrified at the idea. I had said some truly horrid things back there and even though we had said that we wouldn't mean a word, the seed of doubt had still been planted.

"Rose, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but what happened? All I know is that you opened up a gift and promptly apparated after that. Lily was too shocked by whatever the gift was to tell any of us anything," she gave Lily a pointed look, "she still hasn't told me. We were all worried sick, Rose! We had no idea where you'd gone and Lily wasn't in a proper state to enlighten us on what happened," she gave Lily another glare.

"A ring-it was a ring," Lily stammered. Alice gasped and looked at me. I nodded, confirming this statement. I then explained what had happened with the gift, altering what had really happened at Malfoy Manor. I told them that I had stormed into Malfoy Manor (which I did do), found Scorpius, grabbed him and apparated to the road by the Burrow (again true, I just left out some critical details) and that I yelled at him furiously while we stormed up to the Burrow (which was a lie, technically speaking, but it was necessary for Phase Two) which is when the scene downstairs happened.

"Now I see why you were so shocked," Alice said slowly to Lily after she registered what I said.

"Do we need to murder him?" Lily asked lovingly. I choked out a laugh. Lily was probably the only person that could say murder lovingly. Well, her and serial killers...

"I don't think so, but thanks for offering," I said weakly and gave them a feeble smile. I scrambled to my feet, and announced that I would go downstairs, after all there really was no point in moping, that would get absolutely nothing accomplished.

"There's our Rosie!" Alice cheered.

"You sure you want to go downstairs? I mean everyone else will understand, Rose. You just broke up with your boyfriend since 4th year." Lily sympathized.

"Lily, me and Scorp got together in 5th year..." I interrupted.

"Only because you were both too thick when it came to your feelings. And the two of you did kiss in your 4th year. Oh, Rose, don't act so surprised, Al and I saw it. We'd all like to think that you got together in 4th year; I mean otherwise I wouldn't have won that boatload of galleons from the betting pool. He's also your best friend, Rose, you do have a right to mope, you know," Alice explained, leaving me shocked.

"We're not that thick!" I protested.

"Yes, you are," they chorused back.

"Wait, Ali, what betting pool?" I asked, suspicious. Alice's eyes widened and she looked as though she spilled a secret.

"I-well-we-uh," she stammered. I left before I would start laughing at her. I checked my reflection in the mirror and smiled. Perfect, I looked like a mess. No, really, this was very good for Phase Two. My red eyes, blotchy face, and wild hair would make Al feel so much guiltier. And that was the main idea of Phase Two: making Al feel guilty, well that and causing him to become conflicted. That way he might confess and tell us his motive. Though we weren't expecting him to confess yet, it would start eating away at him, and that was a form of revenge in and of itself.

I staggered down the stairs, only to be met by a chorus of "Rose!"s and "What happened?"s. I told them the version of the story that I'd told Alice and Lily through a torrent of tears, making sure that Al saw my distress. I inwardly smirked as I observed his obvious guilt and his inner battle of whether or not to come clean.

I was distracted from this however, by a murderous Domi. She stormed towards the door, or well she attempted to. Xavier grabbed her by her waist and said, "Come on now Flash, we don't need you to be thrown into Azkaban for murder, now do we?" I wondered curiously about how she'd been given that nickname.

"Of course not," she scoffed, "I won't get caught." She struggled against Xavier's grip. Luckily for my fiancé's well being, Xavier played Chaser for Puddlemere United and so he had strong arms due to this. That being said, he was barely able to restrain the furious Domi. He whispered something in her ear and her struggles slowly reduced to nothing.

I half expected one of my other protective cousins *cough* Lucy *cough* to apparate away to commit a felony, but no one did, though I saw a fair share of murderous looks.

After a while, everyone except for me and Al migrated to the kitchen to snitch some of Gran's famous Christmas dinner. (I doubted that there would be any treacle tart by the time we actually started dinner. All of us grand kids were notorious for devouring any treacle tart within a mile radius.)

Al's guilt was written all over his face and he kept opening his mouth as though he wanted to say something before quickly snapping it closed, the effect made him resemble a goldfish. It looked like it would take a while before he would finally spit a word out, so I decided to spend this precious time to advance more with Phase Two. I willed tears to stream down my face.

"I just-I just don't know what happened, Al," I stammered. "Everything was going great between us, perfect even. I even thought that I loved him."

"Th-thought?" He stammered guiltily. I nodded my head in response.

"I just don't know anymore. He just had to ruin it by doing the one thing, the single thing that I told him not to do. I'd told him loads of times before that I wanted my significant other to actually be there when they proposed. And since he didn't fill that requirement- I just don't even know what to think anymore!" I collapsed into sobs. I was telling the truth...mostly. All right so I was playing it up, Scorp and I hadn't actually talked about proposals loads of times, a couple times yes, sometimes jokingly, but it's not like it was a main topic of our conversations. But Al didn't need to know that, and this way he'd feel so much guiltier.

Sure enough, when I looked up it appeared that his breakfast was going to make an unwelcome reappearance.

"I just don't think that I'll be able to forgive him after this," I lied. "I mean you know where I'm coming from, don't you Al? Malfoy is an egotistical git, and to be honest I'm glad we're rid of him," I continued, hating those words, but I told them convincingly nevertheless. And there it was, the second part of Phase Two: making Al feel conflicted and feel like he had to choose a side. Scorp was going to send him a letter, explaining what his side of the story would be and telling Al that he sided with him, didn't he?

Speaking of which, Scorp's stormy gray owl shot through the window-er attempted to. She must not've noticed that the windows were closed to ward off the cold. So she flew straight into the window. I fought the urge to rush to Athena's aid, but I couldn't because she was Scorp's owl, instead I had to wait until Al noticed her.

"M-Malfoy?" He asked, looking rather horrified and appalled with himself.

"Well I can't exactly call him Scorp now can I?" I replied, silently pleading that Al would notice poor Athena. Instead he made a strange choking noise.

Oh screw it, Al wasn't going to be able to notice anything in his current state, in fact he probably wouldn't notice if a metal dragon materialized and blew fire, quickly followed by a remarkably scrawny boy (that had happened before, don't ask), much less if I got up to rescue the poor freezing owl. I slowly inched toward the window and glanced up to check if Al noticed and then continued at a quicker pace, pleased that Al was preoccupied with his inner turmoil. I slowly opened the window, silently pleading for it not to creak. However, it looked like my luck had run out, I winced and froze as the window let out the loudest creak I'd ever heard. But it turned out that fortune really was on my side because Al still seemed much too preoccupied with his self-argument to take notice. I quickly snatched Athena from the ground and brought her into the warmth of the Burrow, letting her defrost (she was pretty much an owlsickle). I quickly scampered back to my previous spot on the squashy armchair. Miraculously, Al hadn't noticed my little owly escapade. So I sat back and nonchalantly said, "Al I think there's an owl for you."

Al snapped out of his thoughts, looked around seemingly disoriented, before noticing the half frozen owl on the carpet.

He scrambled to his feet and rushed towards the owlsickle, checked if she was still alive, snatched up the letter, and then headed upstairs to read it. However, he'd forgotten to bring poor Athena with him, so I watched in amusement as he raced down the steps, seized the owl, and then sprinted back up the steps in a flash.

I figured that I should write my own letter to Scorp, informing him of the success of Phase Two. I trudged up the steps, keeping up my act in the event that someone in the kitchen reminded themselves that breathing was a necessary function and returned to the living room. (I swear once a Weasley/Potter started eating we couldn't stop. Looks like we all've got Dad's appetite.)

I entered my room, and began the vigorous hunt for parchment. Several minutes later, I did a little victory dance after finding some parchment that was stuck behind a Bent-Winged Snitches poster. I then set to the task of actually writing the letter, and was about to send it via Lightning (my owl, what, did you actually think that I could send something by lightning? Don't get me wrong that would be insanely cool, and I'm advanced but I'm not that advanced.) But then I heard a loud creak from behind me and the sound of approaching footsteps. I froze, red handed.

"I just knew something was up. You acted devastated but I didn't think that you were quite devastated enough. I mean Scorpius is practically your other half, and I think that you'd be far more heartbroken if you'd actually lost him. But it looks like you really haven't lost him," she said as she walked towards me, looking at the letter in my hands. I was frozen with shock, unable to form a coherent thought.

"I'm guessing that you didn't tell us the full story, did you Rose? Or should I say Scarlet?"

Comment who you think it is? Please don't forget to review!