Skeins of yarn were scattered around Rose's bed, so many that they almost formed another blanket. It was like having a nest made of rocks, she supposed, but much more comfortable, and sometimes she wished she could just burrow among them to fall asleep. Draco Malfoy had gently pointed out that it would probably be safer to store the yarn under her bed, and she had reluctantly agreed, though she had smiled as she helped pile the yarn into a bag for the first night. It was, admittedly, a little nice to have someone who showed a little worry for her. It seemed like he was doing it more than just because it was his job to make her better, and she almost wished James could come back just so she could rub it in his face that the Malfoys weren't the monsters he seemed to think they were.
More even than showing James, she wanted to show the rest of her family. They cared about her, of course, but they were a little too obvious about it. Half of Albus's letters were about how she should take care of herself, and her parents always seemed a little anxious when they visited. She couldn't blame them, but she could certainly feel justified in being annoyed.
Oddly enough, the one person who didn't seem to worry too much was Grandma Molly, even though just about every Weasley talked about her like she was some kind of mother hen. She worried, of course, but there was something very efficient about her worry. Over the past few weeks – she could very nearly say "the past few months" now and actually remember every day of them – Grandma Molly had been the one person aside from Draco Malfoy who didn't seem afraid that she would enter the room and find that Rose had gone.
In fact, as she came in today, she didn't even bother looking to the bed to check whether Rose was awake before pushing open the door and closing it behind her. "You could set this up as an office," she said, looking critically at the books and papers scattered everywhere. "How much work are you doing?"
"Enough," Rose said, though she wasn't entirely sure about that. She felt like there was so much more she could be doing, but lately she'd been getting tired more easily and letting her time go to waste. She could always make time for Grandma Molly, though, and so she closed her Arithmancy textbook and set it aside, on a rather precarious pile of other books. It wavered but didn't fall, and Rose didn't try to adjust it, nervous that it really would fall if she did.
Grandma Molly frowned a little. "You're just like your mother," she said. "She was always trying to do too much in a short amount of time, too. I always thought she would grow out of it, but she never did." She sat down in the chair beside Rose's bed and smile. "You need to learn how to manage your time, Rosie."
She and Grandpa Arthur were the only people who could still get away with calling her Rosie, and Rose wasn't afraid to correct anyone who thought otherwise. "I'll be fine," she said, and reached around under her bed to grab some yarn and her latest project. Christmas was still a long ways off, but she wanted to get a scarf done for Albus and was still having a little trouble switching colors as smoothly as her grandmother could.
Her grandmother pulled her own knitting project out of her bag and set to work untangling the yarn that had begun winding itself together. It made little screeches whenever she made a wrong move, and she muttered under her breath as she worked at a particularly difficult knot. "I'll never understand why your grandfather started doing experimental magic on my things. I almost miss that flying car."
"Maybe he thought there would be less unexpected danger from yarn," Rose said, not bothering to hide her grin. Grandma Molly shot her a disapproving look, but Rose was sure she didn't mind all that much. After all, given the way some of her uncles had acted when they were her age, she was probably incredibly easy to deal with. "What are you making?"
"A Christmas sweater for Lily," Grandma Molly said. "I thought I'd put a silver moon on there, and your grandfather agreed to make the silver yarn shine, but I don't think he got the spell quite right."
"I could help," Rose said eagerly. "If you just show me the spell he used, I could probably get it right." She didn't think her grandfather had made anything more than a tiny mistake, but even something tiny could have large consequences in complicated magic.
"I think I can handle it myself, dear," her grandmother said with a smile. "If you want, you could give me advice on whether Lily's eyes will look good next to blue. I can't do green with silver, though it would be nice to bring out her eyes. They're a lovely shade, aren't they?" The question was tossed out idly, and Rose knew she didn't have to answer it, so she looked down at her scarf, wishing she could give something more than fashion advice.
One of the good things about being bed-ridden, though there weren't many, was that she had all the time she wanted to be good at something. If she had been at Hogwarts, she wouldn't have had the time to learn how to knit, but now that there was almost nothing else to do, she'd found there were more hours in the day than she had realized. When she couldn't manage to read another page, or when she couldn't fall asleep, she would take out the scarf and knit. Sometimes she had to do it by wandlight, which led to dropped stitches, but slowly, she was getting better. It even looked pretty good, considering it was her first attempt.
As they worked, Grandma Molly would sometimes pause in her work to demonstrate some new kind of stitch, and Rose would lean over and look curiously at what she was doing, but she didn't understand much of what her grandmother was doing. It was interesting, though, and she tried to memorize the finger movements so she could practice later with some scrap yarn. Her memory wasn't photographic, but she was sure she could remember the basics, and she could always ask whether she had gotten it right later on.
"How is everyone?" Rose asked after a silence that had lasted longer than usual. When she had first started knitting, she had wanted silence so she could focus on the stitches, but now she found that she couldn't focus if it was just her and her thoughts. Conversation made it easier to think, somehow, or at least easier to let her fingers simply work.
"We're doing well," Grandma Molly said, not missing a beat in her stitching. "Your grandfather's been practicing charms on the silverware."
"Has he made them dance yet?" Rose asked eagerly, nearly dropping a stitch. She quickly turned back to her scarf and took out a few stitches, just in case, though she was sure she had probably gotten everything right.
"Not yet," Grandma Molly said, and Rose had to glance up to make sure she was smiling and not just annoyed with her husband. "Has he been planning to do that?"
Rose shrugged, not wanting to betray her grandfather. It wouldn't be an actual betrayal, she knew, but ever since she was little, she'd felt a bit of solidarity with him, since he'd had the easiest time of making her laugh, even among a family of Weasleys. He always seemed to have some great project to work on, and she had wanted nothing more than to see him succeed, even if that project changed every time she visited him. "He mentioned it a few times," she said.
"He hadn't said a word to me," Grandma Molly said. "Of course, I'm his wife. He probably knew I'd disapprove." She was still smiling, and Rose wondered why so many people in her family thought that she snapped at Grandpa Arthur so often. Maybe it was just that time had made her more mellow.
"Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise," Rose said brightly.
"If he ever does make them dance, I'll have him bring them here to show you," Grandma Molly said. "So far, he just fixed a few dents. He looked surprised that the spell didn't do more, but I didn't want to ask what he had been planning." She paused, counted stitches, then went right back to knitting. "Does he have any other plans I should know about?"
Rose shook her head, grinning. It felt strange to be involved in this little, harmless battle, and she kind of liked it. If she ever got married, she hoped her husband would be like Grandpa Arthur, someone who would delight her but who she could also fight with. A marriage where everything worked out perfectly might be nice, but it would also be incredibly boring, and the last thing she wanted was for her life to be boring. It would have a lot to live up to, given how exciting the past two years had been, but she was sure there would be plenty of other adventures for her to have once she got back to Hogwarts.
There would certainly be plenty for her to do. She'd been checking the Marauder's Map every chance she got, and something had been puzzling her lately. Scorpius always seemed to be on his own, and while that wasn't entirely unexpected, she'd thought he would spend most of his time with Albus and Ruby. Instead, unless he was in class or with either Zahradnik or Longbottom, he was completely alone. She couldn't tell whether she ought to be worried, so she decided she might as well worry a little. She didn't want to get back to Hogwarts only to find that her friends had stopped talking to each other. The four were hardly her only friends, but they were the ones she cared about most.
If she had to choose between them, though, she already knew who she would pick. She saw Albus all the time over breaks, and he probably wouldn't be bitter if she didn't spend as much time with him at Hogwarts. Besides, he had just about his whole family there now, and Scorpius was alone. She'd never stop feeling guilty if she abandoned him.
But that still left the question of Ruby.
Rose hadn't thought all that much about Ruby, or at least not about Ruby specifically. She'd only thought about her as part of the rest of the group instead of as someone separate, but if the group did split up, then Rose would have to deal with Ruby on her own if she wanted to see her again, and she very much wanted to keep spending time with her. They were friends, after all, even if Ruby was the only friend who made Rose feel as though there were little butterflies flitting through her stomach.
She dropped another stitch but didn't notice for several more minutes, and when she went back to fix it, she muttered curses under her breath, which earned her a disapproving look from Grandma Molly. "Sorry," she said, blushing.
"Is something on your mind?" Grandma Molly asked, returning to her usual look of calm. She must have gotten used to swearing around her children, but that also meant she'd had a lot of time to practice that disapproving look. Rose could certainly attest to the fact that it worked almost like magic.
"No," she said, redoing the row she had messed up. A few seconds later, she sighed and set down the scarf. "Yes. I'm worried that things will change before I can go back."
"Everything changes," Grandma Molly said. "That's the way the world works."
Rose frowned and poked the scarf with her little finger. It was obvious that it was her first try at making a scarf, but only when she had shifted between the green and silver yarns. Maybe she could take out the silver and just do everything in green, but with silver tassels. It would mean a lot of extra work, but she had plenty of time on her hands. "Is there anything I can do?"
"To keep things from changing?"
Rose shook her head, though that was exactly what she had meant. She didn't want to try to explain everything to her grandmother, though, since that would mean talking about the Marauder's Map, and Grandma Molly would almost certainly want an explanation for that. It had been made by some of the most notorious troublemakers Hogwarts had ever seen, and even if Grandma Molly wasn't one of the people who would insist that it belonged in a museum, she probably wouldn't trust it.
Grandpa Arthur certainly wouldn't. Never trust anything if you can't see where it keeps its brain, he had told her years ago, and for a full month after that she had insisted on making sure she knew where to find the brain of anything she encountered.
Oblivious to her granddaughter's distraction, Molly went on, "That would be impossible, though I can see why you'd want to. Change isn't always for the best, and sometimes it means people grow apart from us."
Rose bit her lip. She didn't want to ask Grandma Molly about how to deal with losing someone – that might strike too close to something sensitive – but she wasn't sure how else to word it. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked finally. "I don't want to go back and find out that my friends have started fighting. Or something," she added quickly, just in case Grandma Molly might think that was a very specific fear.
Grandma Molly didn't seem suspicious at all. "Friends argue all the time," she said. "If I'd saved them, I could show you some letters your father wrote, where he was sure he would never be friends with Harry or your mother again. Ask him about those times when you see him again." She held up the sweater, which was nearly done, and nodded in satisfaction.
"It's just that we've been friends for a while," Rose said. "I don't want anything to change."
"How long is 'a while'?" Grandma Molly asked. She was folding up her things, and Rose realized she must have lost track of the time. She wouldn't have as long as she wanted to get advice.
"Well, there's Albus," she said quickly. "He's been my friend forever." Or at least longer than she could remember, which was close enough to forever for a fourteen-year-old. "I've been friends with Ruby since my first year, and with Scorpius since… last year, I guess." Though it felt like longer, as though they had somehow managed to be friends and rivals at the same time without her realizing it.
"I don't think you have anything to worry about," Grandma Molly said, getting to her feet. "Get some rest, Rosie. Next time, I'll show you how to make a sweater. Teddy and Victoire might like it if you made one for their baby."
Rose perked up at once. "Victoire's pregnant?"
"Not yet," Grandma Molly said, "but from the way those two are going, it won't be long." She smiled wistfully. "It's a wonderful thing to be young and in love."
Rose wrinkled her nose. "I tried that once. I didn't like it much." She had liked it at the time, she supposed, but the ending had been rather annoying, and she didn't particularly want to go through it again.
Grandma Molly laughed. "Someone will change your mind, dear. Now, get some rest. I'll see you again in a few days."
As soon as her grandmother was gone, Rose put her knitting aside and reached under her pillow for the Marauder's Map. It sometimes amazed her that it had lasted so long, but perhaps one of the original four had put some kind of charm on it to make sure it wouldn't start falling apart. She wouldn't put it past them; for all they were supposed to be lazy, they were apparently pretty brilliant.
She tapped the parchment with her wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Ink spread across the page, forming the interior of Hogwarts. By now, Rose was pretty much used to seeing it happen, but she still felt a brief moment of amazement before her attention turned to finding her friends. She supposed what she was doing was sort of like spying, but if it was for a good cause, then it was probably all right. What better cause was there than making sure the people she cared about most were all right?
With that thought, she looked first for James. Just as she had expected, he was with Lujayn, and considering how close their dots were, Rose figured they were snogging. When she spotted Albus and Ruby, she was surprised to see that their dots were close as well. They weren't as close as James's and Lujayn's, but they were still much closer than she had expected, and she couldn't help but think of the two of them kissing. For some reason, her heart sank, and she quickly stuffed the parchment away. A moment later, she pulled it out again, tapped it with her wand, and whispered, "Mischief managed." Everything faded away.
She lay back, all interest in knitting gone. She didn't know why she was making this into such a big deal, but she couldn't bring herself to feel anything other than a strange sense of dismay. It wasn't until she had pulled her blankets up around her shoulders that she realized she hadn't remembered to find Scorpius.