October 18, 2026

When Rose woke up, she was still lying on the floor. She didn't want to open her eyes and look around. She didn't want to see the destruction that happened only a few hours previously. The morning sunlight was long gone.

She heard movement and light footsteps walking in the kitchen. Her head was feeling a lot better and most of the cuts on her hands had healed.

She opened her eyes to lightness and realised it was past noon. She pushed herself up to look around, and was actually surprised to see that the destruction wasn't as bad as she thought. In fact, most of it (blood and all) had been cleaned up.

"Molly?" called out Rose. She could only imagine what Molly thought when she got home.

But it was Lucy who poked her head around the corner. "Still confusing me for Molly," she tisked and gave a weak smile. "Molly is still at Lorcan's luckily."

"Good."

"Yeah, that's my thoughts too. How's your head feeling?"

Rose touched the large bandage. "It's fine."

"Good. We're going out to search for Dom in a few minutes."

"We?"

"Just you and I, we need to get her to the hospital. Or rehab. I don't even know. I searched her room all over and the most I found was this - I put it in the bag." Lucy held up the bag for Rose to see. There were a few clear crystals in it.

Rose got up off the floor and walked over to look more closely at the crystals.

"I was thinking it was some sort of a Cheering potion gone wrong and she crystalised it. But I haven't performed any sort of analysis on it yet. She was very happy and bizarre when she came in. And then she turned into a psycho she-monster later."

"I think it's street drugs," said Rose frankly. Lucy spluttered and started to shake her head, her ponytail flipping from side to side.

"Dom, do street drugs? That's not even plausible."

Rose shrugged. "I don't have a reason why she would do it."

"This is crazy. I just. . . what? I don't understand any of it." Lucy was rubbing at her forehead. "You should quickly go wash all the oil off of you before I change your bandages and I'll finish a bit more of the cleaning. Then we'll head up to her lab. If she's not there I have a few other ideas."

"Is Scorpius. . . okay on the couch?"

"Oh yeah, he'll be fine. He woke up about an hour ago and I gave him five potions. He'll be sleeping for a few more hours. He knows to take the potions if I'm not here when he wakes up." Lucy pointed at the table where some bottles were sitting, clearly labelled in Dom's handwriting.

After a quick shower, Lucy and Rose both pulled on their jackets and put on their boots, dressing up warm for their rescue mission.

"Honestly if we see her and she's still like that – we're stunning her. Knock her out. Don't think twice," said Lucy. She pulled open the door and brought the stairs down so they could head to the roof.

The little lab looked lonely sitting on the roof. Rose didn't see anything wrong with it, but Lucy quickened her pace.

The door was open, which was perhaps the first indicator. But when they walked in, Rose knew that it was serious.

Plants were uprooted, cauldrons rusted on the floor, potions and ingredients all over the place, and two spoons were broken in half. There were footprints in some of the dried up liquid, footprints from a boot.

Lucy continued on to the greenhouse, just adjacent to the lab – the same. Everything was chaos.

"What the hell happened here," she murmured. "This is. . . this is. . . "

"Dom's not here." Rose quickly scanned the few aisles of plants. The ones that weren't dead were uprooted.

"How could she have wrecked her own lab? Destroyed it?"

"I don't know."

Lucy took a deep breath. "Well just one more question to ask her when we find her. We're going to apparate to a house now. The guy who lives there is named Piper. He deals with illegal potions and ingredients. Dom's trysted with him a few times and bought the occasional ingredient from him that wasn't carried in the apothecaries. He's got to have some idea about her. I know she would have went to him at one point these last few weeks."

With one last mournful look around, Lucy grabbed Rose's arm and they apparated off the roof directly into the front yard of a house. The grass was long and unkept, but the house was rather ordinary in appearance. There was a woman passed out on the grass near them. Lucy quickly checked that she was alive before facing the house again.

"Piper," Lucy growled. She stormed up the steps and kicked the door open. Rose trailed behind her, impressed with the kick. There was a dank smell coming in from the house, and though she couldn't describe it, an enticing one underlying it. She paused in the entrance to look around. There were lots of shoes by the door on a plastic mat. The walls were white with some purple and blue streaks down the side, as if someone ran a marker over them.

There was a screaming coming from inside the room Lucy just went and Rose raced in for backup. But it wasn't Lucy screaming. Three people ran by her, the whites of their eyes showing. There was only one man left in the room. He was incredibly short and thin like a whip, with vibrant blue hair. His hands were up in surrender as Lucy had her wand out.

"Where is she?" Lucy said. Her voice was harsh.

"I don't know! I don't know!" he had a very faint Chinese accent and was wearing skinny jeans and a very baggy black shirt that almost was at his knees. He started screaming again.

Lucy's wand was in his neck; she was unrelenting. Rose started searching the room around her, looking for anything.

"I'm not going to ask you again Piper. This can turn ugly really quick." Lucy's voice even gave Rose the shivers. She found two small glass bottles with a clear liquid in them and held them up to the light.

"I think I found something Lucy," she said.

"Bring it." She didn't take her eyes from Piper. Piper's screaming stopped.

"Don't touch that!" Piper said frantically. His adam's apple was bobbing. "Do you have any idea how much that's worth?"

"That's not your concern right now. Where is Dom? Have you been giving her drugs?"

Piper dashed out from under her wand and attempted to make a run for it. Rose instantly stuck out her foot and he went sprawling onto the floor. Lucy froze his body a second later.

"Piper. You're just making yourself guiltier by the minute. Did you give her the drugs?" Lucy applied her foot to his neck this time, while he was on the floor. Her face was harsh, the usual laugh lines around her eyes and mouth were gone.

"No! No! It wasn't me. She found them on the street!"

Rose's fingers curled.

"You're lying," she said.

"No! She found them! She brought them here. She had them in her lab! She was trying to make it herself when she ran out!"

Lucy pressed harder against his neck. "And?"

"She needed an ingredient from China. Something that is forbidden in the U.K and only I have access to. She was only testing the potion out. Trying to find its properties." His face was sweating and his eyes were wild. His breathing was ragged because half of his windpipe was cut off with Lucy's boot. However, he was still frozen.

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know! I haven't seen her in a few days! She ran out of serum. The whole city did. But we just got more yesterday because our contact returned from Poland and he brought supplies."

Poland? Rose asked, "are you part of Snake-Bitten?"

Piper's voice answered in a whisper. "No. But I work for them on occasion. I have no choice, you understand."

Lucy looked at Rose, confused. Rose just shook her head.

"I'm going to check the rest of the house. Keep questioning him," Rose said.

The kitchen was the first place she went. Inside was four cauldrons on the counter, boiling on some green flames. Inside them all was a clear liquid. The rest of the kitchen was in decent shape. The floor was a little bit dirty, but there were no dirty dishes or ingredients laying around – like Dom's lab had been. The potions seemed to call her to them and she went to them and looked inside. She was stuck there for a bit, not wanting to move as she just stared at the bubbles that broke the surface.

Lucy's waiting, you need to be quick, Marta said. Rose jolted herself out of the trance.

She opened a cupboard and pulled out a few glass bottles, dipping one into each cauldron collect a sample. She put the stopper on and put it in her bag. She was hoping that they would prove helpful later.

Try some, Greg whispered. Just a little - nobody needs to know.

Even though it was ridiculous that some part of Rose thought that, the smell was almost overwhelming. It smelled. . . she could barely resist.

You saw Dom! If you consume some, it'll be you that's deranged and acting like a lunatic.

Sabotage the potions then, Greg suggested. Nobody should be able to try some either.

Marta rebuked: don't touch them! You don't know their properties, something bad could happen!

Fucking voices, Rose thought, this is driving me nuts. I will be a lunatic soon, without drugs.

Rose didn't really care if she burnt down the kitchen with her tampering. If these were the street drugs, some twisted form of veritaserum. . . Well she'd do anything to destroy them. Stuff like this could destroy lives. She found some random ingredients under the sink and dumped them into the cauldrons. She grabbed one of the spoons to mix it together as a dark smoke started bubbling off and filling the kitchen. The spoon got very hot and then melted in her hand.

"Oh no," Rose muttered to herself. She flung a few more ingredients inside – some sort of red root and dragonfly wings – before she pulled milk from the fridge and added it to the mixtures. Surprisingly, the milk seemed to make the potion settle down, though it worsened the smell around them. It was no longer clear, it was deep green now, and apparently rock solid. She put out the fires and left the potions sitting there.

Good job. Now nobody can use them, Greg said.

Well, hopefully. I might have also made something worse.

Rose finished searching the kitchen, yielding nothing, before she went to search the bedrooms. When she found a shirt of Dom's, her throat closed up on her.

"Bloody hell. . . Dom."

The rooms were nondescript: white on the walls with nothing hanging from them, empty drawers in the dressers, beds with no sheets or blankets.

She went back to the living room. Lucy had taken her foot off of Piper's neck (there was a red spot there now instead) and was leaning against the wall, staring at him.

"Do you know the name Matild?" she asked.

Rose looked at Piper, surprised. "He's a potioneer. That's about all I know. Scorpius knows more."

"Apparently this Matild guy is coming in the next day to pick up the finished potions that are in your pocket. Piper is a little worried for his life if he doesn't have them when he gets here."

What was Lucy getting at? "That's unfortunate. . . I also destroyed the brewing potions I found in the kitchen."

Piper gave a whimper.

"Even better. Piper doesn't know anything else about where Dom is. We'll need to look elsewhere."

Rose held up the shirt she found. "She was here at some point or another."

Lucy took a deep breath, her fists were clenched tight and face was red. "Piper, you're just not helping yourself out here. I'm so angry I probably could kill you, Healer profession be damned."

That didn't seem to phase him. "I'll be dead tomorrow anyway thanks to you two."

"Not my problem. I suggest you run. Fast." She turned to Rose and indicated they leave.

"Are we just going to leave him?" asked Rose when they were back outside. "He will be dead if the gang finds him."

Lucy shook her head. "I don't know. I honestly don't know what to do. He deserves whatever he gets, especially if we can't find Dom. I was banking on him for that information. . . "

"We could turn him in to the Aurors?"

Lucy gritted her teeth. "If he's still here when we find Dom we'll do that. If he wants to save his life, he'll do that himself. Right now he's not a priority. We need to find Dom."

Rose deposited the shirt in her bag with the rest of the evidence and they took off down the street. Every alley they passed, Rose peered in, hoping to catch a glimpse of her cousin. Smeaton's words still rang in her head 'saw that slut of a cousin of yours, sleeping on the street in plain view.' What if she was on the street? With everything that had just gone on, it was highly plausible now.

They reached an old apartment building four blocks away. Lucy rang the buzzer for one of the apartments. Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw movement. She instinctively turned and held up her wand. What she saw though, made her freeze. Seated crossed leg on the ground was one of the triplets. She was blocked from view from all the angles except where they were now. Her short black hair looked shiny and her black eyes were regarding them both calmly.

Rose hit Lucy's side and pointed. Her wand was still up.

Lucy turned and the fierce look on her face instantly melted and she rushed forwards to the girl with short black hair.

"Where is she?" she whispered. Lucy was on her knees and holding the girls hand. The girl was still staring at her with an expressionless face. Her makeup was heavy and probably masked what little emotion would have shown through. Rose didn't know if this was the girl who stole her money the other day, or what the difference was between them all. She didn't trust them one bit though.

"You have to hurry; she's at 114 Knockturn Alley."

Lucy instantly turned around and grabbed Rose. "We're off. Hold steady."

They left the apartment building and were instantly at Knockturn Alley. If Rose wasn't so worried, she would have been frustrated with Lucy's no warning apparition. But she didn't even bring it to light under the circumstances. They ran down Knockturn Alley, people were bustling every which way and it was a fight to get through them.

"Dom! DOM!" called out Lucy. She said to Rose frantically, "what street are we at? Are we going the right way? She said hurry – I don't know if Dom'll be conscious."

Rose eyed the street signs and then they took off running to the left.

"We just trust what that girl says?"

"Yes." Lucy said simply, as if Rose should never have doubted it.

Buildings, people, faces. They just arrived at 114 and Dom was nowhere in sight.

"Blonde hair, blonde hair. Where is she?"

Like a slut, sleeping on the ground.

Rose grabbed Lucy's shoulder and pointed. Near the wall, there was a heap of rags laying there. It looked like a homeless person, but Rose didn't think it would be once the rags were off.

They ran closer, almost running over a group of goblins that were huddled in a group. Rose ripped the ragged blankets off.

It was Dom. Her skin was tinged blue, there was white ringed around her mouth, and she was utterly limp. She had cut marks on the forearm of her left arm and a bruise on her cheekbone. When they peeled off the rest of the rags, they saw her foot. It was yellow and green, severely infected.

Lucy immediately felt for a heartbeat. "It's barely there. We need to get her to Mungo's now."

Rose heaved Dom up, one hand under her head and the other around her legs. Her head lolled backwards. With the weight she gained she wasn't easy to carry.

Lucy was diagnosing her as they walked to a less crowded area.

"She overdosed – her stomach is full of chemicals – severely dehydrated – bacterial infection in her cuts – some blood poisoning - OK here. I'm taking her right to my floor – give me a sec, apparating two people is harder –"

Three and a half seconds later they were in an emergency apparition area and medi-witches and wizards were swarming and Dom was taken from Rose's hands and rushed to a bed and Lucy was talking rapid fire to one of the men in the green robes – and Dom was getting hooked up to an IV, her clothes being removed –

"Rose I'm sorry but you'll have to stay in the waiting room for right now. I'll come and get you as soon as she's stable," Lucy said quickly. "Tell Molly, and the family."

Then Lucy was gone and Rose was alone in the empty room. One of the receptionists walked in and pulled her out of the room, leading her to the waiting room.

"Can I get you anything – tea? Water?" Rose blinked up at the man and shook her head.

"OK. Just wait here, everything will be alright."

Rose sat with a thump on the chair. There was nothing to do but wait.

It didn't take long before what Lucy said registered and Rose asked the receptionist, an older gentleman named Mulroney, for some pen and paper. He looked at her oddly before Rose amended her statement and asked for quills and parchment.

He nodded in understanding and brought her out an ink pot, a small black quill, and some parchment paper.

The wizarding world, so archaic sometimes, Rose thought to herself as she splotched her way through four letters; one for Molly, Dom's parents Bill and Fleur, and her siblings, Louis and Victoire. They could decide who else needed to be at the hospital, but Rose thought the immediate family was the most important. She hesitated before she wrote up one more letter to Scorpius:

Scorpius,

If you wake up and nobody is home, it's because we're all at St. Mungo's. We found Dom passed out in the street, almost dead. She's been taking that street drug from Snake-Bitten, the twisted veritaserum. We found some crystalised in her room. Lucy and I infiltrated a potion house and collected some liquid samples of it and destroyed the rest.

I don't know when we'll be back. Make sure you drink all five potions and get lots of rest. Sorry again. I hope you're feeling better.

-Rose

Rose didn't know why she added that last part. She still felt guilty about Scorpius's injuries, but it was being overshadowed by everything else at the moment. There was so much she wanted to write and say yet it would all have to wait. She headed up to the top floor of Mungo's where some owls were available for delivery and sent off all the letters.

The receptionist brought her coffee when she came back down. And then she was waiting in silence again.

Molly was the first to show up, demanding answers.

"Rose what's wrong with your face? What is going on?" she said. She was frantic; it was all surreal. Rose gave her the bare basics in a monotone voice before Molly went running through the doors that Rose wasn't allowed through.

A few minutes later a Healer came out wearing lime green robes. Rose tensed. What was he going to say? But it was nothing about Dom.

"Hi, are you Rose Weasley? I'm a first year student, my name is Healer Terry. Healer Weasley sent me out here to clean up your injuries."

"I'm fine. Just focus on Dom." The fact was that Rose couldn't even feel any injuries. She'd been letting things heal the muggle way for so long that these small cuts were nothing.

The Healer gave her a smile. "She's getting the best care and attention at the moment. I wasn't working on her however, I'm a student still so I'm not involved in her treatment. . . The twins were insistent."

He had such lovely green eyes. Rose yielded without too much thought. It was something to pass the time. Healer Terry looked at her head, flipping her hair all around to find all the cuts and then was working some minor spells on them. Her hands also took no time at all. Right before he left though, he asked her, "do you have poor circulation? Or low blood pressure?"

"Uh, no? Not that I know of?"

He picked up her hand, the one with the bracelet and showed her it. "Your hand is looking purple and swollen. Usually that's a sign of poor circulation and it's easily – "

Rose ripped her hand out of his and hid it behind her back. "I don't have poor circulation. It's quite alright. It was just a minor accident where I got into some purple dye, it'll wash out in a few days I'm sure."

The Healer didn't quite buy it. "It's awfully swollen for just dye. If you'd like, I can - "

Rose clenched her teeth and said, "thanks for your concern, but it's nothing you need to worry about."

He seemed to get the hint then and bid her goodday. He stayed in the room however, talking with the receptionist.

The next twenty minutes found the whole Weasley-Delacour family in the waiting room; Victoire arrived first. She came from work as soon as she received the memo, her whole family was at home still and she was in tears as Rose told her what happened to her sister.

Rose's Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur arrived just as Rose finished telling Victoire, and then Rose was repeating everything again as Fleur was hugging Victoire tight. They all listened to the story in disbelief.

Bill had many questions and when he exhausted Rose, he even went to the receptionist who didn't hesitate to answer with what he knew about her most recent update. Not many people said 'no' to Bill, he looked fearsome with the scars on his face.

Louis was the last to arrive; he had been in Ireland at school and seemed hesitant to say how he got to England so fast. They were all sure it was an illegal portkey, though the fact that Louis did something illegal was hard to believe. He didn't look travel weary at all and his robes had no wrinkles.

His eyes were glued on Rose the whole time she was telling him the story. She had no doubt that he was trying to piece together what she wasn't saying – trying to understand if there was a connection between the bracelet on Rose's wrist and what happened to his sister.

He held her hands in his while he spoke. He had soft hands that hadn't seen much sun. Her's felt rough and calloused, and beat up. After she was done speaking, he looked down at her hands and thumbed the swollen one. He felt for the bracelet on her wrist. "Oh no Rose," he murmured. "This is all true? It's happening?"

Rose shrugged and resisted the urge to rip her hands away from Louis, for he actually knew something about the situation.

"It's all okay Lou. No worries." She gave him a smile, but he just tightened his hold on her.

"Rose. . ."

"Not here," she said quietly and then turned back to sit in the chair by Victoire.

Not here, not ever, said Greg.

No more people involved in this. From now on it'll be just me, thought Rose. I'll have to get rid of Scorpius too somehow.

Fat chance that'll happen, said Marta

It was another hour before both Molly and Lucy came out. Lucy had bags under her eyes, Rose didn't know if she slept after her night shift at all. She'd probably been awake over 30 hours so far. It was already late afternoon now.

"She's safe and stable," Lucy told them all. Everyone gave a sigh of relief.

Bill and Fleur started bombarding the twins with questions about how Dom was now. Then Rose was included in the questions when they talked about Dom's slow decline. Some of the questions were tough: 'why had nobody noticed Dom was doing this?' 'Does she not usually sleep in her bed?' 'You didn't think to question her and ask what she was doing?' 'You didn't notice her weight gain and think to mention it?'

They all answered everything the best they could. Dom was an adult, none of them were going to babysit her and make sure she was home every evening. Everyone came and went. They were all just so busy that they didn't even notice that Dom was slipping away, sure they noticed weird things, but it only all came together today.

Bill still didn't look impressed and Fleur had a frown on her face as they looked at the three girls. Finally their questions slowed, and then stopped. Bill sat down on the chair with a loud sigh, putting his head in his hands. Fleur had stress lines around her eyes and mouth, her short silver hair was in a bun on her head. She asked Lucy and Molly, "but when can we see our daughter?"

"It shouldn't be much longer. She'll still be unconscious," Lucy replied. Fleur nodded and sat down beside her husband, putting her arms around him.

"So Dom is a drug addict," Victoire said. She wiped some of the tears from her eyes and gave a warbled laugh. "Next thing you know, little Lou is going to start cross-dressing."

Louis's cheeks turned red. "Indeed not!"

Victoire pinched his cheek. "You would make such a beautiful girl," she crooned. The conversation that ensured helped lighten the mood until a medi-witch came to get them.

"She's unconscious, but she can now have visitors. Immediate family first."

Bill, Fleur, Victoire, and Louis all followed the Healer through the doors. Rose looked at Molly and Lucy but they didn't say anything. Half an hour later Victoire came out and said they could go in.

"I've got to go home, I need to tell Teddy and the kids about Dom. I'll bring them all by in a little bit." Victoire gave them all a hug. "She looks bad, but this is just the beginning. She'll get better. Thanks for finding her before it was too late."

They just took a quick visit in to see Dom. Her parents had already set up the chairs right by the bed and Fleur had summoned some flowers for the bedside table. She certainly looked better than she did on the street.

"Her coma won't last much longer than two days, maybe even as little as a day," Lucy said as they were standing there looking at Dom. "She's a fighter and will get through all this. We'll bring back some supper for you lot."

Molly, Lucy, and Rose left the hospital for to round up some food from the restaurant across the street. They didn't talk much. There was so much to say, but nobody said anything.

A/N: So, this happens to be my last update for awhile; 'twas good while it lasted! I'm actually off to the Arctic for a few weeks so if I get any reviews I will definitely not be able to reply until I am home - no service, cell, or email. Cheers all and have a great rest of the summer or winter in whatever hemisphere you are located. Hopefully the weather is kind and the people are jolly. :)