A/N: Hello people! I'm back, after school started again and I had a ton of paperwork to prepare for my pupils! Here are the four last chapters of this story, plus its epilogue. I've let Rose and Theseus continue their journey at their own pace, which I hope you'll appreciate, since they are not the kind of people to jump each other's bones in public. :P See you at the end of it all! :D

Disclaimer: I don't own Rose Granger-Weasley, Newt Scamander or any other character created by J.K. Rowling. My aim is merely to entertain and play around with them a little.

Chapter forty-one: In which Rose is being tortured

When Rose came to – that is to say, when someone cast the counter-spell to wake her – it was to the realisation that some kind of potion was being force-fed to her. She tried to sputter and spit, but a hand held her throat firmly, forcing her to swallow.

Immediately, a form of haze took over her, as if she was only half-awake. When she finally managed to open her eyes, the place she was in appeared blurry, almost as if she was drunk. It didn't take long to understand that she'd been drugged, and that her magical powers had therefore been muted.

When the room came into focus, Rose was staring at her hand, which she found rested on her stomach, which itself, along with the rest of her body, rested on an old-fashioned four-poster bed with beddings that had definitely seen better days. She'd been brought to a small bedroom with one window which curtains had been closed, letting only a slither of light in.

The two people with her in the room, though, she had no question about who they were or why they were here.

Vinda Rosier had managed to trap her in, pulling her through the wards, and had apparently been the one force-feeding her the potion, for she was standing next to the bed, her cold features looking even icier than they had in Paris. She was holding a non-descript vial. She smirked evilly before retreating to a corner of the room, behind her master.

Obviously, Grindelwald was the second person present. Come to think of it, Rose supposed it had been him who had Stunned her. He was pacing at the foot of the bed, eyeing her with those scary mismatched eyes, hands crossed behind his back.

"Miss Rose," he started in that velvety silver-tongue of his. "I am so happy to see you again. I was worried that I would have to go all the way to London to visit your charming house; but thankfully, you came to me instead. Thank you."

Rose tried to sit up, to glare at him more provocatively, but stumbled a bit, the potion hindering even the easiest of movements. "What do you want, Grindelwald?"

He paused, placing his hands on the footboard, a tight smile appearing on his lips. "What do you suppose I want, Miss Rose? The same I wanted in New-York, the same I wanted in Paris. I want you by my side. With your knowledge of the future, we could change History!"

Rosier didn't look very happy at that thought, if the little huff she gave was any indication.

Rose kept glaring at the Dark Wizard and managed to pull herself into a seating position, drawing her knees closer to herself and her feet further away from him. "I told you before: I will never join you. I'd rather die."

His gaze turned colder, as it had in the Lestranges vault. "I was hoping that losing Miss Lestrange would have made you see sense. Alas," he said, slowly drawing his wand from his sleeve. That's when Rose realised that hers wasn't anywhere near her. Not that she could have used it anyway… "I was worried it'd come to this. I'm sorry, but it is in all probability going to hurt."

She didn't even have time to wonder what he was going to strike her with. He silently cast the spell, and it was all she could do to prepare herself mentally for the assault that followed.

Grindelwald's skills in Legilimency were out of this world, Rose knew from History books. Given the wand he was wielding, it was even more obvious in the ease he had to enter her mind and start roaming through it.

What he couldn't account for was the fact that, after the Second Wizarding War, Occlumency had become part of the Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum. At O.W.L.s level. Rose had always had trouble stopping her mind from going a thousand miles an hour, but she knew the basics, and knew how to use her weaknesses to her best advantage.

It was useless to try and completely block Grindelwald from her mind. What Occlumency could do, however, was steer her thoughts away from what he most wanted to see, and instead, stump him onto more trivial memories.

Rose forced a smirk on her lips as she concentrated all her will-power onto conjuring her first Quidditch match and the ensuing party. She focused on James spinning her around and his feet getting caught in his Quidditch robes, making them both stumble into the mud. She focused on Fred scooping said mud and dropping it on top of her head. She focused on the score board, the pride of seeing 180-10 against Ravenclaw. She focused on it hard, and was rewarded after only a minute.

Grindelwald released his spell, and for the first time since she had seen that face and not Percival Graves', she saw him displaying outward anger. And it was directed at her. Rose, as any sensible person faced with Gellert Grindelwald's wrath, felt herself tremble in fear of what was to come.

"Very foolish," he said, his velvety tone edgier, somehow. "Very foolish," he repeated, "to try and resist this, Miss Rose." He lifted his wand so quickly she barely saw it, but then, the pain overwhelmed everything.

She had never been on the receiving end of a Cruciatus Curse. She knew the theory, knew that the pain endured was the worst possible. That it was excruciating enough to drive some people mad and even to drive them to kill themselves. She wasn't prepared.

At the back of her mind, she realised she was screaming as she was writhing down on the bed, faced with the worst pain possible. It felt like her whole body was on fire, that a million daggers were piercing her skin, that someone was dragging the dirtiest, dullest blade through her stomach. She screamed and screamed, until he lifted it.

In the aftermath of his Cruciatus, Grindelwald tried Legilimency again. But Rose's mind was by then totally overshadowed by the pain she had just experienced, and any other thought did not make it to the forefront of her consciousness.

When he realised that, he turned to another tactic.

"Impero," he uttered, the only spell he had actually cast verbally since she'd unfortunately met him.

Again, Rose had never before experienced being put under the Imperius Curse. Obviously, her parents – and surprisingly, more her father than her mother, for once – had warned her against its effects, its consequences, and the dangers of facing someone who you did not realise were under that spell. Of course, in 2026, there were very little occurrences of people actually falling victims to the Imperius, the Ministry saw to that, but right then, she wished she had taken her Dad's advice and asked Uncle Harry to teach her how to resist it.

"You are going to tell me everything I need to know," Grindelwald hissed.

Rose was sitting ramrod on her bed, unable to move, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. She had lost all control over her own body. It was as if her mind was trapped inside a cage. She heard herself say "I am going to tell you everything you need to know."

He opened his mouth to ask his first damning question, but the door to the room burst open then, revealing Abernathy. He didn't even spare her a glance, and his forked tongue passed his lips before he announced "Masster, they have managed to take the wardss down."

Rose could not move an inch, wish she could to scream and alert her family and friends that she was up there, that she needed help.

Instead, Grindelwald lifted his wand, not fully releasing her, but the force of his spell lessening, somehow. "Go. Stop them. Take Credence. His powers have grown further than I could have imagined."

Rosier and Abernathy nodded gravely, and both left the room, closing the door behind them, again not sparing her the slightest of glances.

However, Grindelwald's anger, displeasure that Newt and the others had somehow managed to get through his powerful protection, and overall annoyance at her resistance all made his Imperius weaker by the second. He hadn't noticed, for instead of turning back to her, he strode to the window to glance at the outside of the house.

Rose found her limbs cooperating, even if it took her a humongous effort even just to move her hand from under her from where she'd writhed under the Cruciatus. She turned her head carefully, trying to find anything that could help her. Anything that could buy her time while she was unable to speak or yell.

As soon as he put her under the Imperius again, she was done for.

Then, her gaze fell onto the very heavy horse sculpture that decorated the bedside table. With calculated movements, and a weary glance towards her assailant, she managed to bring it from the side, and into her hands.

Now, with what to do with it…

Grindelwald was going to turn from the window any time now.

Rose glanced down at the sculpture, then back at the Dark Wizard.

She breathed in deeply, drew the horse bac, then rammed it as strongly as she could into her own head…

It dizzied her for about ten seconds, making black spots enter her sight, and blood pour from her temple and onto her cheeks, then neck.

Rose fell unconscious from the wound another minute later, not having noticed that the whole house had shaken, and not just her. Grindelwald had wobbled on his two feet, only realising what she'd done once the tremors were over.

Then, he growled, pointed his wand at her again, and cast another Cruciatus Curse that both woke her up and made her arch over the mattress with a mighty scream.

She was pain. Pain, blood, and nothing else. She was going to die there, she knew it. How could she ever survive this? Again and again and again he held the curse over her, making her throat sorer by the second with the force of her screams. Her muscles clenched painfully from where she was fisting her hands and breaking skin with her nails. She felt as though one of her legs had snapped, as though her back was broken. At one point, she fell off the bed, but he still didn't lift the curse.

An eternity later, when Rose's mind was close to breaking point, when she felt like nothing in life had ever been anything else than pain, she faintly heard the sound of broken wood, and finally, the spell was lifted.

A second later, she was out for the count…