Chapter 10
"And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.
And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.
So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!"
- Emily Dickinson [I Cannot Live With You]
"Fuck off, Wood," Rose snarled at Oliver under her breath as he glared at her once again from a desk off to her right. He'd been doing this on and off for the entire lesson thus far and it was really gotting on her nerves.
"Ten points from Slytherin. I do not allow that kind of language in my classroom Miss Malfoy," McGonagall leveled a stern look in her direction. 'Damn her hearing.'
"Yes, Professor, I'm sorry." Rose said sincerely, and McGonagall turned back to the board. Oliver shot her a superior look and Rose, taking a page out of Sam's book, flipped him off—the patented Malfoy sneer on her face. Oliver Wood was currently angry with the Slytherin Quidditch team for managing to switch the lineup so that Gryffindor was now playing Hufflepuff the next day. Rose had noticed that McGonagall had also been treating her a little more frostily since the announcement. Unlike Severus Snape, she wouldn't hold a grudge, but it was very telling how important Quidditch was to all at Hogwarts that the switch had impacted the usually unbiased woman's attitude towards Rose at all.
Rose rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers in irritation. She hadn't known about Draco and Flint's plan to use his arm injury from being attacked by the hippogriff earlier in the year to switch when they would be playing. Given the raging thunderstorm that was going on outside, Rose would be very grateful not to be flying around if the weather didn't change tomorrow. In addition to that, the Quidditch match was taking place the morning after Rose's Herbology class was set to harvest various plants under the light of the full moon. Instead of meeting during the day, Professor Sprout was expecting them in the greenhouses that night to best utilize the potency of certain plants that followed the lunar cycle. As such, Rose was oscillating between being annoyed with Flint and her brother for putting off the match she felt ready for, and grateful to them for not having a Quidditch match to add to what had already been a very stressful week.
It was when Draco pulled these kinds of stunts that she worried the most about him though. It wasn't that she had a problem with the outcome of his actions, it was how he went about doing it. This had always been Lucius Malfoy's contention with his son as well. Draco lacked subtlety. He didn't understand the difference between accomplishing a goal and accomplishing it without anyone realizing you've had a hand in it. He was often artless and tactless in his scheming, hitting with too broad a stroke rather than cutting with the fine precision of a master duelist.
Rose shook her head and returned her focus to McGonagall's lesson where they were soon partnered with one another and took turns transfiguring themselves into animals so that their partner could untransfigure them back into humans. Rose hated the feeling of transfiguring herself into an animal. Unlike an animagus transformation, transfiguration into an animal reduced your intelligence to that of the animal itself. This was one of the reasons that those attempting an animagus transformation were supervised so carefully. No one wanted to be trapped as an animal forever. None of them were perfectly successful at untransfiguring their partner. Rose had mistakenly thought she'd successfully untransfigured Percy only to realize he still had whiskers. It was still better than the ferret's tail and the patches of hair all over her body that he had left her with. McGonagall waved her wand at the two of them, putting the pair to rights before ending class.
"Miss Malfoy," McGonagall called to her before she left, and Rose turned curiously. "I wonder if you could escort Mr. Potter between his next class. He should be leaving Defense Against the Dark Arts shortly."
"But Percy…"
"Mr. Weasley has been escorting Mr. Potter around all week." McGonagall cut her off with a stern expression. And Rose nodded reluctantly. She didn't really want Professor McGonagall more upset with her.
Rose walked grumpily to the DADA classroom, hoping to get this over with as quickly as possible. She arrived just in time for the class of Gryffindors to pour out of the room complaining loudly to each other. Emerging last were Harry and his two friends—Ron and Hermione, she thought their names were. Harry froze when he saw her.
"Oh no, not you, too." Harry glared, and Rose rolled her eyes at him. "It was bad enough with just the teachers and Percy."
"I'm not any happier about it than you are," Rose assured him with a shrug. "What's the matter with all of you; from the way Draco's been carrying on I thought you all adored Lupin?"
"It wasn't Lupin," said the younger Weasley with absolute venom in his voice. "It was that stupid git, Snape."
"Ron!" Hermione chastised, looking at Rose and the Head Girl badge she wore nervously.
"Snape?" Rose asked in confusion, looking through the door behind him to see Severus Snape sitting behind Lupin's desk looking as pleased as she'd ever seen him. Her eyes shot immediately back to Harry's. "Why was Snape teaching you?"
"He said Professor Lupin was ill," Hermione answered before Harry could even open his mouth. "He wouldn't tell us why. Aren't you working with him this year? Do you know if he's alright?"
"Professor Lupin's health is his own business, not yours. Anyway, don't you three have another class to go to? Let's get a move on so we can get this over with." Rose followed behind the three Gryffindors, ignoring the curious glances of other students at the unlikely group. The three of them spent most of the walk badly abusing Snape, phrases like "slimy git," and "we're nowhere close to learning about werewolves" and "scrubbing bedpans, can you believe it" being repeated ad nauseum. Rose found the experience oddly cathartic. Hermione would throw a nervous look over her shoulder at Rose each time they said something insensitive, but she pretended not to hear them. When they arrived at the classroom, Ron and Hermione walked quickly in, lost in conversation, but Harry hesitated and turned to her.
"What is it Potter? Not going to try for some family bonding again are you?" Harry glared at her, his green eyes narrowing in frustration. While he had tried repeatedly to get to know her in his first year after discovering they were siblings, he had given that up after realizing she wanted nothing to do with them. He half turned to go inside but stopped himself.
"I've seen you with Professor Lupin, you care about him, don't you?" Rose was taken aback, taking too long to realize he didn't mean it that way.
"Yes, and…?" Rose asked dismissively, Harry was obviously working himself up to something.
"I think Snape is poisoning him."
"What?" Rose was so surprised she almost forgot to laugh at his absurd statement. Harry glared at her when she finally began to chuckle.
"I'm serious. Snape hates Lupin, and the day I was in his office he brought him this potion, and now Lupin's fallen ill?"
"Severus Snape wouldn't poison Professor Lupin right under Dumbledore's nose no matter how he feels about him," Rose told Harry dismissively. While she sounded confident, she wasn't completely sure. What if Severus had seen more of her memories during the occlumency slip up than he was letting on? What if he had figured out the feelings, the desires, she'd been having for Remus? Surely, he wouldn't just let that go.
"Can you at least check on him?"
"I'll consider it."
Rose couldn't help herself from going immediately to the hospital wing after leaving Harry at the door to his classroom. Her palms were covered in a cold sweat as she threw open the doors. Looking around at the beds, Rose didn't see Lupin anywhere. There was a first-year student asleep in a bed who had steam pouring out of his ears, but other than that the hospital wing was completely deserted. Madam Pomfrey poked her head out of her office and frowned at Rose, looking her up and down for injury.
"Can I help you Miss Malfoy?"
"I'm sorry to bother you Madam Pomfrey, but is Professor Lupin here? I heard he was taken ill."
"Afraid not, Malfoy. Not to worry, he should be fine in a couple of days."
"Thank you, Madam Pomfrey." Rose intoned hollowly, wandering back down the corridors. If Lupin wasn't in the hospital wing that meant he was holed up in his private chambers, but she couldn't get to those to check on him without walking through the classroom. And with Professor Snape teaching classes in there for the rest of the day that certainly wasn't about to happen.
Instead, she wandered into the Great Hall, taking up an early seat at the Slytherin table. A spattering of students were at the tables already, most doing homework or talking quietly. Rose pulled out a tree branch and her wand and continued to try to change it into stone. So far, she had managed to transfigure the tree branch to take on the appearance of stone, but she hadn't actually managed any real petrification. When she eventually got bored with failing miserably at that, Rose moved on to trying to conjure blue flames in her hand and quickly realized she was much too distracted to have any intention, intensity, or intuition. She settled for just rolling a pencil around on the tabletop without the use of her wand. Rose had just gotten it to revolve slowly in midair when students began to trickle in for dinner.
Mari and Parker approached the seats across from her. Mari flicked her finger at the pencil, causing it to fly down the table and imbed itself into a minced pie. Rose raised her eyebrow at her. Parker, who'd been having very little luck with wandless magic in their Defense classes looked between the two of them with a mixture of admiration and annoyance.
"How do you two do that?" He asked testily as they began loading their plates with food. Mariko and Rose locked eyes and grinned at each other.
"Intention—" began Mariko.
"Intensity—" added Rose.
"Intuition!" they chorused together. Parker rolled his eyes at the two of them.
"Very funny. I didn't think anything would be worse than the three D's from apparition classes. Destination, determination, deliberation," he squeaked in a passible imitation of the apparition instructor from the previous year.
"Have you ever wondered why wizards love alliteration so much?" Mariko asked as she began cutting her food up into bite sized pieces.
"Maybe it makes things seem more magical," Parker offered and Rose and Mariko both scoffed at this. Towards the end of dinner, the three looked up when Ava wandered over from the Ravenclaw table. Plopping down next to Rose, Ava grinned at her.
"Ready for tonight's lesson?" Ava gushed excitedly. Rose smiled at her enthusiastic friend.
"I'm ready for it to be over so we can go to bed."
"Oh, don't be like that." Ava huffed at her. Herbology had always been one of her favorite subjects, narrowly beating out Potions, likely because Professor Sprout was a much more pleasant teacher to the enthusiastic Ravenclaw than Snape was.
"Can't help it," Rose shrugged. "It's been a long week, and I'm so ready for the weekend."
"Yes well, for some of us it's going to be an even longer week," Ava sniffed pointedly.
"If Sam would like to come yell at me for something my brother did, she's welcome to do it," Rose narrowed her eyes at Ava. As one of the Hufflepuff beaters, Sam would be playing in the Quidditch match the next day and was not happy about it. Ava glanced around at all the Slytherins sitting near her and decided not to press the point.
"Are you ready to head down?" Ava asked instead.
"Sure, see you later Mari." Rose stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, and walked towards the entrance of the hall with Ava. Some of their Herbology class were already milling about the entrance but were reluctant to be the first ones to head out into the storm. Ava and Rose looked at each other, flipping the hoods of their robes up over their faces. Rose pointed her wand tip towards the sky, a clear protective umbrella materializing from it and the two huddled together as they ran for the greenhouses—Ava lighting the way with her own wand. The two fit well under the umbrella together, being approximately the same height. Ava, who tended to slouch to disguise how tall she was around Sam, was more comfortable standing straight when it was just herself and Rose.
When they finally arrived at the greenhouses, the two were quite wet and muddy from running through puddles and from the rain which had been blown nearly horizontally into them from the intense wind. Flicking her wand at their robes, and muttering an incantation, Ava dried them off quickly. Their classmates poured in behind them, apparently emboldened to brave the rain by Rose and Ava. Professor Sprout wandered in under a heavy yellow cloak moments later, her cheeks extra rosy today from the cold wind.
"Thank you all for braving the storm. We will divide up into pairs and make a quick work of the harvest so that all of us can return to the warmth of the castle as quickly as possible," Sprout told them good naturedly. As the class divided up, Sprout sent the pairs to different stations with instructions to record their harvests in their journals including the material of the tools they harvested with, the phase of the moon, and the amount of cloud cover. They would hand these in at the end of the lesson in order to receive full marks.
Ava and Rose carefully slid on dragonhide gloves and retrieved silver sheers and a silver trowel. This was especially important because the two had been put in the group that was harvesting aconite. The incredibly toxic plant could be harvested in numerous ways depending on what the intended purpose was for. When harvested on the full moon using silver tools, the aconite was best suited for use in the Wolfsbane potion that allowed a werewolf to keep their mind during a transformation. It was most potent on a cloudless night, but even with the storm would serve its purpose. Ava and Rose worked quickly together, gently digging up the aconite by the roots and dividing up the components of the plant—roots, leaves, and flowers. Rose loved the small purplish-blue flowers of the plant. While the roots were used in the Wide-eye potion, it was the flowers that were used in the Wolfsbane potion and gave it its distinctive coloration and bluish smoke.
Rose's shears fell silent as she froze, replaying her last thought over again in her head. 'Wolfsbane's distinctive coloration and bluish smoke.' She could almost feel the color draining from her face as the goblet full of blue potion that Snape had set down in front of her flashed across her mind's eye. She couldn't be sure that was in fact the Wolfsbane potion, having only heard of the description from her herbology notes on the uses of aconite. But Rose was keenly aware that Lupin had been ingesting the potion for more than one day. Knew that he had been too sick to teach but had stayed in his quarters rather than go to the hospital wing. And, by glancing down at her lunar chart saw the irrefutable evidence that tonight was the night of the full moon.
"Are you alright, Rose, you look like you've seen a ghost?" Ava asked her, brown eyes full of concern. Rose smiled at Ava, assured her that she was fine, and returned to harvesting the aconite. But she was distracted, and Ava had to correct her a few times. She flicked back in her lunar cycle calendar to see that the last full moon had been the day before term started—they last time Lupin had looked particularly ill.
Was this why Snape distrusted Lupin so much? But no, it seemed too far-fetched and ridiculous. Surely Professor Dumbledore wouldn't allow a werewolf to teach at this school. But then, Rose thought about all of the stupid crazy things Dumbledore had done—like appointing an unqualified grounds keeper as a Professor, and she suddenly wasn't so sure. And hadn't Harry, Ron, and Hermione been complaining to each other earlier about Snape jumping ahead in their lessons to lecture the class on werewolves? Was Lupin—the same Lupin whose smile made her heart melt and butterflies start in her stomach—really a monstrous beast? Rose was completely silent for the remainder of the lesson, and Ava kept glancing at her with concern.
"Are you alright, Rose?" Ava asked as they made their way back up to the castle.
"I'm fine, just have a bit of a stomachache," Rose answered quickly.
"Do you want me to walk you to the hospital wing?"
"I think I'll be okay, thanks though. 'Night, Ava."
"'Night, Rose."
As Ava turned and climbed the stairs to Ravenclaw tower, Rose looked towards the corridor that would lead her down to the dungeons and back to the Slytherin common room. She should just go to bed and forget about all of this. Lupin would be better in a couple days, and Rose could pretend nothing was wrong. They could go back to blushing each time one of them was caught staring by the other.
But part of Rose was shaking in fury. How dare they ask her to work so closely with the man, knowing what he was? How dare they tie her reputation to someone who would be so reviled and hated should his secret get out? How dare they keep her in the dark about something that could affect her safety and the safety of her classmates? And most of all, how could she—a Malfoy—have begun to fall for a man who was secretly a monster? Rose had barely registered that she was climbing stairs up to the third floor or that she was walking to the DADA classroom, barely noticed as she pushed the door of his office open, hardly thought about batting the tapestry to his private chamber aside while the lovers danced around on the cloth and the musician played his lute. It was only when Rose saw the flickering of firelight from under the crack of the door and when she felt the smooth oak beneath her hand that Rose returned to herself. Hesitating for a moment, Rose took a deep calming breath, and drew her wand.
"Ad meliora," Rose murmured in a hoarse whisper. The lock clicked, and the door slowly swung open.