Chapter 14

A/N: Hello readers! Only one chapter after this one. The end approaches...

It's snowing today, which is exciting. I learned last night that if the internet says it's -17 outside with wind chill, a middle of the night walk is a bad idea. Should have been common sense, but sometimes I have a problem with that.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who reviewed!

~Frosty

Rose was shoved into a chair beside Scorpius, both of their wands taken from them. She and Scorpius were tied to the chairs with scratchy rope - though thankfully rope of the non poison variety.

Things were not going quite as she'd planned. At least the guard who patted her down missed the deed hidden in her bra. He'd tried to do a proper job patting her down, only to be scolded by Mrs. Petra when he took too long on her breasts.

"I knew the moment you showed up at the house that something strange was going on with you two. Your names were on the list, but you had no idea who I was." Mrs. Petra stood up straighter, looking even more superior – something Rose wouldn't have thought possible.

"Why let us in then?" Rose asked, mostly stalling while she looked over Scorpius, questioning with her eyes whether he was hurt. He glared her into paying attention to the situation at hand, silently scolding her for worrying about him when she should be more concerned with getting them out of their sticky situation. Bossy.

Mrs. Petra shrugged. "My idiot husband's parties are excruciatingly boring. When a potentially entertaining situation presented itself, I pounced. And it seems I was right. I've heard impressive things about you, Rose Weasley."

"That's interesting, since I've heard almost nothing about you." Rose tilted her head to the side and studied the older woman. "I have, however, heard plenty about your husband - though having met you both I'm starting to think much of what everyone attributes to him is actually your work."

The woman smiled, her expression eerily similar to the shark's grin Rose exhibited with some regularity. "I was wondering if you would live up to the stories about you. I'm happy I'm not disappointed."

Rose glanced at Scorpius to see him mirroring her movement, both of them thinking the same thing; they were looking at an older, crueler version of her. This was the person Rose could have grown into without Scorpius to keep her grounded and her family to love her unconditionally.

"Mrs. Petra," Rose started, but the woman held up a hand.

"Please, call me Jessa. I hate being associated with Marco when I don't have to be, especially when there's someone who understands me in the room. I'd go almost as far as saying you and I were equals – though you obviously have some maturing to do before you pose a proper threat."

Rose blinked, wondering when in the world they'd become so close and when exactly this woman had decided that Rose wasn't a threat. Jessa had blackened Scorpius' eye. In Rose's books, that meant the woman was never going to be anything other than an enemy, no matter how well they understood each other. And if she thought Rose wasn't a force to be reckoned with, she was quickly going to learn otherwise.

"Are you implying we're alike?" Rose asked mildly, showing none of her animosity.

"Of course. Like you, I'm attached to a man not worthy of me, and like you, I'm in that position because his place in society and his fortune are convenient." She sent a contemptuous look towards Scorpius, who kept his face completely blank. "We have both worked to make a name for ourselves through manipulation, and we defy our overbearing fathers regularly."

Rose wouldn't go as far as calling her father overbearing or saying that most of the work she did was in defiance of her father. In fact, a lot of the time she did things that helped her father and the Aurors.

She thought back to the files she'd read on Mr. Petra. His wife's father hadn't been mentioned, leaving Rose without information that was apparently more important than the Aurors had thought. They really were slacking in their investigations.

Rose hated being without a key piece of the puzzle. Her only consolation was that the Aurors didn't have that piece either. It wasn't much of a consolation.

She let Jessa rant for a while about the stupidity of her husband. The woman wasn't as similar to Rose as she liked to think. She was much too controlled by her emotions and apparently prone to projecting her own feelings on to other people. It was careless of her.

Rose was bored out of her mind, but she didn't want to stop the woman on the off chance that she gave up some piece of information that was usable. However, nothing usable seemed likely to present itself.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that Jessa was a dangerous sociopath in desperate need of some psychological help. Rose idly wondered if she herself would have lost her mind like this if she'd had a different upbringing. Somehow, Rose doubted it.

What Jessa did reveal was that she thought she and Rose had something in common because their fathers were both Aurors – or at least Jessa's father had been an Auror before she'd had him killed. Apparently he'd been a terrible father and the main reason she had a problem with authority. It was like Jessa had gone so long pretending to be the nice criminal's wife and suppressing every little thought that now that she had someone she thought sympathised with her, she couldn't stop the torrent of words from escaping.

Finally tired of the crazed ranting, Rose interrupted her. "If you hate the Aurors so much, how come you take one around with you as a hulking guard?"

Jessa was, of course, immediately suspicious, both of her guards and of what Rose was saying. She was a little crazed, but Jessa wasn't stupid.

"Which one?" she asked Rose, her eyes on the men while they shared a bewildered glance. One of them looked almost panicked and Jessa immediately zeroed in on him, sensing weakness like any good predator.

Huh. Rose had taken a guess that one of the two men was an Auror plant. It had been a stab in the dark really. If he wasn't sent there to spy for the Ministry, goon number two was definitely there to do something his boss lady wasn't going to like. He practically squirmed out of his skin when Jessa approached him.

While the woman's back was turned, Scorpius gave Rose a look that clearly told her to try not to get anyone killed. She rolled her eyes at him, the situation well in hand.

"Is this true, Gervis?" Jessa asked the large man, her nose nearly touching his chin as she invaded his personal space. Intimidation was easier with greater height, but Jessa made do with a decent attempt. "Did the Aurors send you here to betray me?"

If the man was from the Aurors, they really should have put more effort in training him to lie. Gervis was practically shaking in his boots. "O-of course not. I'm loyal, Jessa."

No he wasn't, and Jessa could tell just as easily as Rose could.

"I should kill you," she hissed.

"I have a better idea," Rose called.

More trusting now that she knew Rose had told the truth about her bodyguard, Jessa flicked her wrist at her still-loyal guard and had him restrain his partner while she turned back to her captives. She was clearly projecting her lack of faith in her husband onto Scorpius instead of seeing him for the threat he was, because she continued to ignore him and only address Rose.

"And what would you suggest?" she asked, still suspicious.

"Send Mr. Traitor there back to the Aurors with a hostage note," Rose suggested. "You have me, someone the Aurors will want back very much. If I were in your shoes, I'd be using it to my advantage."

"What do you get out of this arrangement?"

Rose shrugged. "My father tried to manipulate me and I didn't appreciate it. I want him to suffer a little so he knows he can't do that kind of thing and get away unscathed. What better way to make him squirm than to find out that his little girl has been kidnapped by criminals that the Aurors are watching?"

"I'll consider it," Jessa said, tilting her head to the side as she thought about the idea. Rose could tell that she didn't want to trust her, but at the same time Jessa liked the idea and wanted to say no to the logic of going against what her captives suggested. Unfortunately for her, she was projecting her hatred of her own father onto Ron, and with her own father dead, there weren't many ways for her to get back at the real man.

Abruptly, Jessa left the room, jerking her head for her loyal bodyguard to drag the other one after her.

"You know there's a good chance she's going to kill him," Scorpius observed once they were alone in the room. There was no accusation in the statement; it was just an idle comment.

"Better him than us." Rose sounded nonchalant in case Jessa was using some sort of listening device. She knew Scorpius could tell that she was actually concerned about the man. Turning Jessa against her own guards was supposed to limit the number of people between them and the exit, not get someone who was doing his best to bring in criminals killed for doing his job.

Scorpius shifted around a little, wiggling until he loosened the ropes. For someone so suspicious, it was a wonder that Jessa hadn't made sure the ropes holding her captives were tight enough to actually keep them captive.

"These ropes are tight," Scorpius said with a straight face as he held up his free hands and then went to work on untying Rose.

"I guess we're stuck here until Jessa comes to a decision," she responded, perfectly deadpan.

When Jessa returned to the room a few hours later, Rose and Scorpius were both in their chairs with their hands behind their backs as if they were still tied there.

They'd watched from the window as all the guests from the party had filed out of the house, most of them stumbling as their alcohol-addled minds struggled to keep them upright. Rose sincerely doubted that she and Scorpius had been missed.

This time, Jessa was only accompanied by one guard.

"I've sent the traitor with a message to your father," Jessa told Rose. "But his compliance with my exorbitant ransom isn't what's going to determine your survival."

"What will?" Rose asked.

"I want to know why you snuck into my party in the first place, and, while we're on the topic, why you ruined one of my most profitable gambling dens – yes, I know that was you."

Rose glanced at the clock and then at Scorpius, ready to be done with the whole hostage thing. They only had a few more minutes until the little packages they'd left in the foyer made themselves known. Scorpius, keeping an eye on the time as well, nodded at her when she subtly held up three fingers.

Jessa caught the exchange, of course, but she was still too confident in the rope holding them to think they were arranging an escape attempt. She kept her eyes on them, but she didn't try to separate them or anything that might have prevented what happened next.

"You had something of my brother's and I was just getting it back for him," Rose said as Scorpius launched himself at the guard. Before Jessa could realize what was happening and take out her wand, Rose jumped from her own chair and tackled the woman.

Almost in unison, Scorpius and Rose found their captor's wands and stunned them.

"This has taken a little longer than I anticipated," Rose said, dusting off her hands. She accepted the guard's wand from Scorpius, put both wands in one of the desk drawers, and then locked them magically while Scorpius dragged the two frozen figures to the side of the room. It would be a shame for someone to trip over them.

"I wasn't aware that we had other plans." Scorpius looked immensely relieved to have his own wand back. He had faith in Rose, of course, but there was faith and then there was stupidity. He preferred to have a wand on him when faced with potentially deadly criminals; it was just a quirk of his.

Ignoring him, Rose crouched down beside Jessa, knowing that though she couldn't show it, the older woman could hear her just fine. "You should have married an equal, not a puppet. I think you could have been someone less... bitter if you had."

"Rose," Scorpius called from the door. "The time."

She turned to move towards him just as the door burst open, slamming into Scorpius and making him stumble a few steps before he tripped, hitting his head on the desk on his way to the floor.

It was Marco, red in the face and clearly struggling to see them properly, but a threat nonetheless.

Rose raised her wand, ready to defend herself and Scorpius, but the drunkard was faster than she had given him credit for. She didn't want to admit to herself that Jess's opinion of the man had coloured her thoughts. Unfortunately, she had to do exactly that as the supposedly useless and definitely drunk man disarmed her and shoved her to the floor beside Scorpius, who was conscious but groggy.

"I'm tired of everyone thinking I'm dense!" Marco roared as his wand gave off angry red sparks. One had to wonder what in the world Jessa had said to him while she'd been out of the room.

Seeing that the burning sparks were going to hit Scorpius, Rose shifted so that she was over top of him, burning her arm in the process. She hissed in pain and glanced at the clock once more.

"Brace yourself," she whispered to Scorpius, who was conscious but blinking groggily at everything. The packages had been intended as a little surprise for the people who had put Rose through entirely too much trouble. Rose had thought she and Scorpius would be long gone by the time they actually went off.

Scorpius shakily managed to drag himself partially under the desk, Rose right behind him.

"You can't hide from me!" Marco shouted. His wand was half raised to try and hex them out from their hiding place when a rumble that shook the entire building ruined his already shaky balance and had him flat on his back. It sounded like he hit his head pretty hard when it bounced on the ground.

Rose was quick to her feet, grabbing Marco's wand as well as her own before stunning him.

"Can you walk?" she asked Scorpius as he got unsteadily to his feet.

"Can you?" He shot a pointed – and only slightly blurry – glance towards the ankle he'd watched her roll earlier.

"We'll lean on each other."