"Rose, dear, do you want more soup?" Molly hovered over her granddaughter, as she started ladling more soup into Rose's almost-full bowl.
Rose exchanged a look with Lily and bit back a smile as she accepted the onion soup and took a few sips.
"Where is everyone?" Hermione asked, setting down a bowl of salad onto the table.
Molly shrugged and ladled more soup into Lily's bowl and then Ginny's. "Most of them said that they couldn't come." She sighed. "I was so looking forward to it."
"Where's Granddad?" Lily asked.
"Off in his shed, fiddling with some Muggle object," Molly huffed and settled down into the seat at the head of the table, in front of the four girls.
"Now then, why don't you girls move in here while Harry, Ron, and Scorpius are off saving the world?" Molly asked, placing a roll on Ginny's plate.
"Actually, Nana, we're all at my house," Rose said. "I don't want the girls to have their life uprooted or anything." The girls were currently all upstairs in Ginny's old room, hopefully not doing anything that would get them into trouble.
"Oh," Molly said. She paused before adding, "But wouldn't you all feel so much safer here?"
Ginny bit her lip, trying not to smile. "Mum, it's alright; we're all together at Rose's house. Rose doesn't want to move the girls anyplace else."
Molly sighed and stirred her soup wistfully. "I would feel so much better if you were all here."
"Really, Nana, it's alright. They shouldn't be gone too long, anyways, right?" Rose looked for confirmation (help/support/a life raft) at Ginny and her mum.
They both nodded furiously.
"Molly, don't worry, they'll be home soon and we'll all be fine while they're gone," Hermione said.
"I just worry about you girls," Molly sighed. "Especially you, Rose," she smiled at her granddaughter. "You're so young and you have such young children. If something happens to Scorpius I just want you to be someplace where you'll have someone watching over you."
Rose swallowed and looked down at the table. "I'm going to go check on the girls," she said and bolted without any further comments.
But instead of going to check on her daughters she sat on the stairs, still close enough to hear the conversation at the table.
Usually Molly wasn't this tactless. Rose wondered if it stemmed from her being so worried about all of her sons. She'd always considered Harry as her seventh son and now she seemed to consider Scorpius one, as well.
"Mum," Ginny groaned. "Why would you say that? After all these years, you should know how much we worry when they're away. Saying something like that just makes all the worries come up to the surface, especially when we've repressed them already."
Molly sighed. "I'm just so worried for her. I mean, the girls are so young and what if she has to raise them all by herself? It's not like we're not all thinking it."
"But Rose doesn't want to think about it," Lily said.
"Molly," Hermione said, "she doesn't ever want to appear weak. And to her, worrying about this is weak when she knows that her worrying will do nothing to help."
Rose bit her lip. It was true. All of it. And it was just scaring her further.
What if he didn't come back? What if Scorpius died? What if he was really, really hurt? What if he was gone a really long time? Kidnapped? Tortured? So many things could go wrong.
Rose squeezed her eyes shut. She would not think about this. He was going to be fine. He'd promised her no heroics. He'd be alright. He promised. He'd always come home alright before, this time wasn't going to be any different.
So far, everything was just going along normally, Rose thought as she waved her wand at a locket and purple sparks emitted from it.
Beside her, Nathaniel was doing the same thing.
The locket was an ancient heirloom of the Zabini family. The Malfoys' family friends. Their son, Mark, had always been good friends with Scorpius. And since their families were such good friends, she was by extension, and now she was breaking curses on their locket. Mark's mother loved that locket and she couldn't bear to part with it, no matter how dangerous it was.
Rose and Nathaniel waved their wands a bit more and with a puff of smoke the locket opened.
"Bit dramatic, huh?" Nathaniel looked at Rose and grinned.
She nodded and smiled. They both walked a little closer to the locket and Nathaniel used his wand to open it further.
Rose felt her breath catch in her throat. The inside was just as exquisite as the outside. It looked like someone had spent years delicately engraving all of these designs. Inside of it there was a crumbling picture. Rose supposed it had been black and white but the colors had faded and gone a bit more Sepia-ish with age.
The photo had been taken in what looked like the early 1900s. A man with dark hair and skin had an arm around the waist of a woman with a big smile that seemed to light up her face.
"She looks so happy," Rose whispered.
Nathaniel smiled at the look on Rose's face. "She does. Do you know who tha' is?"
Rose shook her head, but the man did look familiar. Quite a bit like Mark, actually. "Is that one of the Zabini ancestors?"
Nathaniel nodded.
"They look so happy," Rose murmured.
Nathaniel looked at her oddly. "Feeling a little homesick?"
Rose's head jerked and she looked at him. She smiled ruefully. "I'm that obvious?"
Nathaniel smiled. "There's a picture of me and my wife on our honeymoon tha' I never fail to smile at when I look at it. Martha gets tha' look on her face whenever she glances at it, too."
Rose grinned. "There's a picture of the five of us at the Burrow. All of them tackled me and we're staring up at the camera with big grins. Mia was missing her two front teeth."
"Sounds like a nice picture," Nathaniel said.
"It is," Rose nodded.
"Thought any more abou' wha' we discussed last time?"
Rose nodded. "A little bit, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do, though. Probably take a sabbatical for a little while and see how that goes." She shrugged and started writing down what counter-curses, spells, and charms she'd used to break the curses on the lock.
"Martha wanted me ta invite you an' the girls over for dinner sometime this week," Nathaniel said.
"Just Martha?" Rose smirked. "You don't enjoy our company as well? I'm so hurt," Rose flung a hand over her forehead.
"Aw, Squirt, you know I like all of ya's too."
Rose chuckled. "What day?"
"Thursday sound good?"
"Per-fect-o," Rose chirped and they returned back to work.
Thanks for reading and please review!
