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-four: In which promises are made

Settling back in London after the whole ordeal was even stranger and more difficult than after Paris. The little house with its magical basement had almost lost its appeal, as if at any given moment, Grindelwald would walk through the door and kill them all.

Newt had unsurprisingly been the one who had settled back in the easiest out of all of them. He'd gone straight to his creatures, checked in on each of them, congratulated Bunty on her good work, and had officially taken Nagini as his second assistant. The young woman would receive a pay, and have a purpose of her own while having someone she trusted to monitor her transformations.

She had brought Credence to Yusuf and her's apartment in Diagon Alley. At first, the dark-skinned wizard had been more than reluctant to welcome the boy he still considered to be Corvus Lestrange into his life and home, but after a while, they'd come to somehow tame each other. Credence had subsequently visited Dumbledore to talk about his identity, and had come out of Hogwarts with more questions and more uncertainties than ever: he was not Aurelius Dumbledore. Grindelwald had fooled him again.

Closed off and mistrusting, the young man had still retained the instinctual trust he had put in Tina, and the Auror was the only person he let close enough to teach him about magic. She'd become his teacher, and was visiting him almost daily for hour-long studies and exercises.

Tina herself had gone back to work almost immediately. She'd been promoted, Travers seeing the potential in her and congratulating her on her good work in Brazil and Mexico.

Theseus was still in Saint Mungo's weeks after their return. His health had improved a notch, but he still suffered moments of lunacy, some of which made him violent towards others but, worse, towards himself. He'd broken his own wrist and suffered a concussion twice since coming back from Mexico.

Rose had trouble sleeping. Her panic attacks had come back, stronger, this time triggered by the littlest things. She'd wake up at night, persuaded that Grindelwald was standing at the foot of her bed, persuaded to be under the Cruciatus again. She took regular doses of Dreamless Sleep, but knew she couldn't count on it too much.

Instead, she'd found some sort of solace in editing the last manuscript of her and Newt's joined book. Titled 'Fantastic Beasts and Their Medical Prowess', it'd been sent to the editor eleven days after San Francisco. She had little doubt it'd soon be published, and then, she'd become almost as famous as her brother.

Queenie and Jacob visited them on a gloomy, rainy day. Rose had thought about visiting Theseus at the hospital, something she'd done only once since they'd come back, because the panic that had taken her had pushed him into another episode; but she hung her coat back onto the peg when her dear friends came through the door, beaming and oozing happiness.

Neither of them had lived through Mexico. Rose was glad that Queenie had stopped reading her mind so often, because she didn't want her friend to relive her horrendous experience, especially not in her state.

"Queens! Jacob! What are you doing here?"

"We have news!" the baker said. He was wearing civilian clothes, and was clean of all flour stains that usually clung to his hair or skin when he visited. Rose understood that he hadn't been working that day.

"Do you want me to call the others? Tina is with Newt and the girls downstairs."

"Please do, Rosie dear," Queenie smiled, "I'll make the tea." She moved to the kitchen as if the house was hers, and Rose shook her head fondly before heading to the basement stairs.

She yelled at Newt to come up with his 'Charlie's Angels', and even though he wouldn't get the reference, when he came back up, Tina, Bunty and Nagini were effectively with him.

They all sat down around the dining table, looking at Queenie expectantly, not really sure what they had to tell them all.

"Queens," Tina said after a moment, visibly impatient, "if you don't tell us right this instant, I'm going to scream."

The blonde smiled and chuckled, grabbing her husband's hand. They both had misty eyes, and their grins were huge and beautiful to behold. "Jacob and I, we have gone to the doctor's this morning."

Tina's eyes widened, worry passing through for a second before she must have realised that, if the news was bad, her sister wouldn't be beaming. "And?"

"And it turns out that…we are expecting…twins!"

Bunty was the first to shake off her surprise to squeal in glee. She placed her hand in front of her mouth to stop the nervous laughter that bubbled there, but soon, she wasn't the only one with a curious case of the giggles. Tina leapt from her chair to hug her sister, her laugh loud and welcome. Newt's smile was toothy and happier than ever. Nagini's own tender laughter was endearing. And Rose felt lighter and happier than she had in weeks…

"Twins!" Tina said again. "Well, good luck Jacob!"

The baker laughed, then apparently realised that, with a witch as a wife, there was a high chance that at least one of his children would be magical as well. He suddenly lost all colour in his face, which made everyone laugh harder at his expense…

Instead of going straight to Saint Mungo's later that day, Rose decided to honour a meeting that she had postponed for long enough. She'd sent a quick Patronus – it had been harder than ever before to conjure the lioness – and headed to Diagon Alley and one of its many teashops to wait for an infamous wizard.

Albus Dumbledore was, in his own account, never late. Rose supposed that, one day, he'd say that he 'arrived precisely when he meant to'. It would have made her laugh, once upon a time, to think those words. But then, sat in a private corner of this tearoom, surrounded by chatter and too many people for comfort, she wasn't sure she'd laugh like that again.

"Miss Rose," the future Headmaster announced when he arrived. As soon as he'd sat down, he cast a Silencing Charm around them, one that Rose doubled with a Muffliato.

"Professor," she said, monotone. "I'm sorry it took me so long to agree to meeting you."

"I understand why you didn't feel up to it, Rose, don't worry." His blue piercing eyes turned a shade of worried. "How are you faring?"

"I'd say 'better', but I'm not sure. I keep having nightmares, and waking up to burning limbs and the lingering feeling of being watched…"

He nodded, pitying her, she knew, but not judging her, which she was thankful for. "If you require anything from Hogwarts' Infirmary, or from its professors, you know you only have to ask."

She nodded back, lips pursed. "Thank you."

"Now," he sighed, "I won't beat around the bush any longer. I've broken the Blood Pact."

Rose's eyes widened in shock. She'd been serious when she'd told Newt that she intended to help Dumbledore break the Pact herself, in memory of Leta and to avenge Theseus' state. She probably shouldn't have underestimated the wizard's power, come to think of it. The hope that bloomed into her irises when she understood the whole ramifications of such a news, though, was all-encompassing. "Are you going after him?"

Dumbledore's eyes bore into her. He checked his charm, as if what was going to follow was a secretive affair. Rose soon understood why. "I need to know some things first."

Her eyes narrowed. "Such as?"

"Rose, in your time, when am I supposed to go after him?" Again, she showed surprise, and he countered with a quick "I can read between the lines. The way you've been acting around me, alluding to some things from your past and my future… I'm the one to defeat him, am I not?"

She gritted her teeth, unsure as to what to answer to that. The truth, she found, was the better option in this case. "You are. You defeat him in 1945. In an epic duel that History of Magic classes talk about for decades after."

He chuckled darkly. "I don't really care about the fame it would bring me. I'm more interested in why 1945."

She shrugged. "I don't know. We never learnt about what happened before. Only that he came to power around 1930, that he helped some bad events occur in the Muggle world, and that you beat him in 1945."

"Do you think that, in that timeline, I'd have broken the Blood Pact later than 1928?"

Rose stared at him. She knew what this conversation was about now. He was wondering how much of her past had already been altered, and how much they could still alter, for the better. She daren't think 'For the Greater Good', although that was the sentiment, somehow.

She'd had her reservations, before. When she'd saved Queenie and understood that she hadn't been supposed to do that, she'd almost been broken with the thought of having destroyed her family, with the thought that, maybe, she'd stopped her parents, her brother from ever existing. Now, however, after having suffered at the hand of Grindelwald personally, she wasn't sure she cared. Not if she had, by procuration, the power to stop him hurting any more people before he was supposed to be stopped.

That's why, at long last, she said "I don't think you were supposed to break it now, no. But you have. What are you going to do with that knowledge, now?"

Dumbledore's piercing eyes kept boring into her. "You said he came to power in 1930?"

"That's when he'd rallied enough people to his cause that the whole of Europe, and part of America and Asia, were aflame. Muggles and Muggleborns murdered in plain sight, propaganda plastered everywhere, the symbol of the Deathly Hallows painted on every wall like a warning…"

He gasped when she'd said those two words. She'd edged around them before, knowing fully well about his childhood obsession for the three famed items, but unwilling to rekindle it.

She didn't let him question her on that, and carried on. "If you can stop it all from happening, or if there is the slightest chance that you can slow him down, make sure he harms less people than he's supposed to, then you have to do it. You can't stay back with the knowledge of what will happen. You don't have the right to."

Flames started creeping in his gaze, now. "Rose, you are asking me to change the future."

"I am asking you to save innocent lives. I am asking you to go after your lover, and to stop him." Because she felt like this lingering sentiment was holding him back, she added "You don't need to kill him. You didn't, in my time. He died in Nurmengard in 1998." She didn't say what killed him. It wasn't necessary to dwell on that now…

More questions seemed to creep in Dumbledore's mind, but he didn't voice them. Sighing, he repeated "I can't change 15 years, Rose…"

Anger rose in her veins, then. Impulsively, she placed her hand on top of the small table, palm up. "I'll make you swear, if I have to, Albus Dumbledore." She had never used his given name before, and it made him look up from her proffered hand in surprise. "'For the Greater Good', remember? That was your motto, when you were an idealistic young man. Well, right now, I'm asking you, not to kill Grindelwald, not even to run head first into a trap, but just to swear to me that you'll go after him, and that you'll do your utter best to stop him before 1945."

It seemed like her offer – or rather, her threat – hit him hard. Pain was visible in his features. Rose wondered if she'd ever experience herself the kind of love and passion that he had had with Grindelwald; a love and passion that still plagued him enough that he was unwilling to go after him, to betray the feelings he still held in high regard.

Slowly, Albus Dumbledore placed his hand in Rose's, held his wand up above them both, and uttered the words that sealed his Unbreakable Vow. "I, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, swear to you, Rose Scamander-Granger-Weasley, that I will go after Gellert Grindelwald before the year is over. That I will try my utmost best to stop him before 1945. That I will make sure that fewer lives than you have known are destroyed by his hand." Thin slithers of gold magic bounds their hands and wrists together, remaining visible even after the spell was over.

They released each other's hand, and stared each other down for a few moments longer.

Then, Rose lifted her wand, dropped the Muffliato, and breathed a deep "Care for some tea, Professor?".