Chapter 10
A/N: Hello readers! Happy St. Patrick's Day!
So I got quite a bit of interest in a sequel and kept writing it. I'm just writing the starting of chapter 6.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed and to irianaceleste for betaing!
To yay: That's sort of what happened. Scorpius will clear it up in a few chapters.
To summerful21: I thought Rose needed an abnormal amount of confidence – in herself and Scorpius. It just seemed to fit. So I couldn't make her all insecure. It's surprisingly refreshing to just skip over the "what did he mean by that" angst and move on with writing the story. I wish the same thing...
To Guest: The sequel to The Case of the Creature Kidnappings is getting there. I'm almost done writing chapter 17, but won't be posting it until I'm finished writing it.
~Frosty
The morning of the Hogsmeade trip dawned cold and rainy. Rose was no stranger to rain, but that didn't mean its presence made her foul mood any less horrible. Looking up at the clouds and pouring rain in the magical ceiling of the Great Hall, she frowned so hard that the resulting lines were probably permanently etched into her face.
"If you're not careful, your face is going to stick like that," Hy said from beside her.
Rose shifted her glare to the girl at her side but didn't comment. Any words that came from her mouth would probably be mean ones and she didn't want to ruin their budding friendship just because she was in a horrible mood.
"So, are you ready for Hogsmeade this weekend? I thought we could leave breakfast early and spend some extra time on makeup or something." Hy was trying to distract her, and Rose appreciated it, but she wasn't the type to wear makeup without ulterior motives. Besides, it just didn't seem practical when the rain would only wash it off again.
Hy was looking so hopeful that Rose just couldn't bring herself to crush her. "As soon as the paper gets here."
Right on schedule, an army of owls flooded into the room, barraging students with their mail and various copies of the paper. The quiet shuffling of parchment and sleepy conversations were interrupted only minutes later by a surprisingly high-pitched scream.
Hy looked at Rose questioningly when a Cheshire smile broke out over her face. Instead of answering, Rose spread out her copy of the paper flat on the table so that Hy could get a good look at the front page headline.
Morgana Christianson, Wizengamot Member, Arrested for Child Trafficking
The accompanying picture showed Ivan's mother as she was dragged out of her home kicking and screaming by a pair of annoyed Aurors. It had been Ivan's scream to ruin the early-morning peace of the Great Hall.
Originally, Rose had planned on something simple, maybe a nice scandal with shagging an intern, but in the process of planning it and organizing for the evidence to be planted, Rose had discovered a few details that didn't add up and did some snooping. A few anonymous tips here and there, and the formerly powerful woman was in disgrace and on her way to prison.
The child trafficking charges were actually deserved. Morgana had run a service to magical families that took away their Squib children and sold them to wealthy houses as servants. It was horrible and she deserved prison for what she'd done.
Christianson was so distraught that he had to be escorted out of the Great Hall by the Headmistress. The details had fallen together so nicely that Rose almost didn't miss the fact that she couldn't share her successful scheme with Scorpius.
Hy clapped her hands and laughed in delight as she watched the moving picture of the Aurors dragging Mrs. Christianson from her house again and again.
Across the hall, Rose's eyes met Lily's. Rose gave the smallest of nods, as close as a bow as she could get without incriminating herself. Lily bent down to read the headline one more time before watching a crying Ivan leave the hall. She burst into laughter, startling a few of her fellow Gryffindors.
Hy had the best intentions, but she just didn't have the attention span to entertain a friend when there were so many willing boys hanging around. They had only been in Hogsmeade for half an hour when Rose got tired of Hy's longing stares.
"Go," she said impatiently.
Hy wrung her hands. "Are you sure?"
"Go." It was almost unbearable to watch Hy's eyes light up with excitement for each boy who showed interest and then watch that excitement die when she remembered that she wasn't there alone. At least this way, one of them got to have a good time.
Rose was a little disgusted with her sudden selflessness, but she comforted herself with the fact that this probably meant that she was growing as a person... or something.
The rain that had let up while they were walking into town chose the moment Hy left to return with a vengeance. Normally, Rose would have sought shelter, but she was in a melancholic, brooding mood that suited the rain. She was only going to be an angsty teenager once, so she might as well get her moody walk in the rain out of the way.
It only took her a few minutes in the rain to remember that she hated being cold. Walking in the rain just to feel poetic and deep while depressed had been a stupid idea. Rose certainly wasn't going to try that again.
She had made it all the way out to the Shrieking Shack before she realized how stupid she was being and turned to head back, only to find that there was something in her path. Rose bashed into a solid body and very nearly fell on her butt. She would have landed in the mud if the owner of said body hadn't reached out and grabbed her arms to steady her.
"What are you doing here?" he hissed, once again using that angry tone she wasn't used to. Pissing him off seemed all that she could manage these days.
"I wanted to go for a walk."
Scorpius was dripping wet, his hair plastered to his head and his coat probably weighing twice its usual amount with all the water it had absorbed. He looked cold – everything except his eyes, that is. Those held enough burning anger that Rose was tempted to hold out her hands and see if it would warm them.
"I should have known not to trust your dad when he assured me you weren't going to be here today," Scorpius growled.
If he hadn't been so angry with her, Rose knew that growl would have sent happy tingles down her spine.
Who was she kidding?
Even though he was furious with her, that rumble sound in his voice gave her tingles.
"More importantly, you should have known that telling me to stay away without even bothering with an explanation would just make me do the opposite of what I'm told."
He accepted that without argument. "I should have, but that doesn't matter anymore. You're here now and we're going to have to do some improvising."
The pieces finally clicked together and she realized what she'd been too self-absorbed to notice when her dad had been telling her to stay away from Hogsmeade.
"I'm the target, aren't I?"
Scorpius nodded grimly. "And you wandered over here just as I was supposed to get the decoy."
Peeking in the direction he indicated with his eyes, Rose saw a female Auror with a wig that looked just like her hair. The woman didn't look happy. In fact, she was mouthing some very rude words at Rose while glancing towards the trees where Rose could only assume her father and uncle were hiding.
"Looks like we're in this alone then," Rose said.
"Your dad is going to kill me."
When Scorpius nodded, indicating a direction, Rose obediently started forward. She was so pathetically pleased to be with Scorpius again that she almost wasn't concerned to be walking into a trap.
"Don't worry," she said, "This is mostly his fault for keeping me out of the loop."
Suddenly, Scorpius grabbed both of her arms and pinned them to her sides from behind.
"This would be more convincing if you struggled and looked scared," he murmured, pushing her forward in a way that looked rough but really wasn't.
It wasn't really hard for her to act scared; she glanced from side to side, catching sight of her uncle and father's horrified faces from where they were hiding in the bushes. Rose made sure that it looked like she was desperately searching for a way to escape, not that she was scanning the area to see if she could spot the other Aurors.
"Scorpius, what the heck do you think you're doing?" she demanded, trying to yank herself out of his hold. She raised her voice so that wherever those boys who fancied themselves Death Eaters were hiding, they'd be able to hear her objections.
"Is this because I got a boyfriend and didn't need you anymore? Because you're not going to get away with manhandling me like this. I know your weaknesses and I will destroy you."
"Nice," Scorpius murmured, pretending that he was hissing threats.
If the situation hadn't been so dire, Rose would have smiled. Her ability to make threats was one of her most valuable skills and Scorpius was one of the few people who could appreciate it – mostly because he was one of the few people towards whom said threats were rarely directed towards.
They rounded the side of the Shrieking Shack. The building itself was locked down with spells too strong and thorough for the average student to break through, so the three boys that Rose had seen with Lockhart were just gathered on the far side of the building. As far as secret meeting places went, it was both overdone and unimpressive.
"Well, Scorpius," Luciano Zabini said, running his eyes over Rose, "To be honest, I didn't think you were going to have the balls to bring us your little spitfire."
Zabini was the only one of these people that Rose had actually liked at some point. He was Scorpius' cousin, so she'd seen him at her friend's house in the past and she'd thought they'd been having a good time. Apparently she was wrong and he'd been secretly thinking of ways to start a movement against people with her heritage. It was clear that Zabini was the one in charge from the way the other two stood slightly behind him, seeming to wait for an order. He had always enjoyed giving orders. Maybe this was just the best way for him to pick up minions?
"Blood's thicker than water," Scorpius answered his cousin. He adjusted his hold on Rose, making it appear that he was holding her tighter while using the motion to hide the fact that he slipped her wand from her pocket.
"Pat her down," Zabini ordered Hughes. "You seem to have enjoyed it the last time you did it."
Ew, he'd talked about her. It made her feel kind of dirty. Rose hoped he had been mocked mercilessly for the lipstick he'd had smeared all over his face.
Scorpius released her and Hughes came forward. As a general rule, patting someone down for weapons wasn't creepy, but Hughes had a gift. He lingered over areas where it was very unlikely that she'd hidden something as large as a wand and had a smarmy smirk on his face the entire time.
When he pulled away, Rose desperately wanted a long, scalding hot shower to remove his contamination from her. The cold rain just wasn't cutting it as far as cleansing went. Sure, she'd had his tongue in her mouth not too long ago, but that had been different. She had been in control of that situation and it made all of the difference.
As she stumbled back from Hughes, Scorpius grabbed her from behind once more. His hold looked like he was just trying to keep her extra secure as she struggled and spit insults at him, but it was really more of a hug that served the added bonus of hiding his movements as he returned her wand to her pocket.
Never had Rose been so thankful that they'd spent most of their third year perfecting their pick-pocketing ability. She would hate to face whatever these people had in store for her without her wand.
Rose wasn't stupid. She knew the law well - mostly because she spent a lot of her time dancing the line of legality and it helped to know on which side she'd fall if caught. The case against these boys stood a good chance of being dismissed as a witch hunt against Purebloods. They needed to actually see these boys doing something wrong instead of just talking about it, which meant that Rose had to actually let them hit her at least once.
Scorpius squeezed her arms in brief comfort as Zabini approached her. This wasn't going to be fun for either of them.