Hello there! I hope you're all still safe and well, no matter where you are. I had this idea that I just had to write down to cleanse the palate between other projects.

The usual disclaimers and all that jazz. I own nothing. Also, if you ever catch typos or mistakes, please feel free to PM me instead of leaving those notes in the comments. Thanks!


8 February, 2007: 5:00pm

"Rose Granger, slow down!"

The auburn-haired girl of almost eight years giggled as she wove through the foot traffic on the London street. Her school skirt swished at her knees while her short legs pumped with a vigor unshared by her mother. She was good at football in school. A fast runner. It was her intellect her peers feared the most. Though every time her hand shot into the air they all groaned.

"Rose, I am most certainly not joking!"

Normally, her gran would pick her up from school in her car. A car not all that dissimilar from her mother's but her mother's wasn't as often used. Her mother utilized other alternate forms of travel. Forms her classmates could only dream about and that much to her annoyance, she wasn't allowed to share with them.

However, today was different. Today had been a parents day at her school and she'd had to sit under her mother's watchful gaze as she followed her to each class. The leering of the few single father's wasn't exactly helpful either. Worse so when her mother told one of them off at lunch for being 'presumptuous and highly inappropriate for a school setting'. Her best friend Elizabeth's dad had it bad for her mum but the attraction wasn't reciprocated. In fact, her mum went out of her way to leave the man on their doorstep whenever he picked Elizabeth up from a playdate, not wanting him inside their flat.

"Rose—final warning to slow down!"

Sometimes she wished her mother wasn't so opposed to male attention. Especially so whenever she found her staring sadly into a cuppa sometime around midnight, unable to sleep.

The war. Everyone still talked about the war. The one her school friends knew nothing about.

She'd only visited her mother at work a handful of times, delivered by her gran at the visitor's entrance. A place her gran could only see because of special clearance granted by the Minister. People stared at her. It made her feel like hundreds of ants were crawling up and down her spine. She wasn't keen on that kind of attention. Nor did she appreciate Mrs. Druthers on the fourth floor who turned her nose up at her mother despite that she very much outranked her.

It had something to do with that scar on her mum's left arm. The one she'd traced with her fingertips more times than she could count while falling asleep with her mother's arms wrapped around her and a film on the telly. It meant something. Something bad. She knew what it meant of course. Her uncle—though at the time he wasn't yet her uncle—told her once. The way her mum yelled at him upon finding out was not an experience she desired to relive. Ever.

Her mother shielded her from some things. She knew she did. But not everything. She was too smart to be duped for long. The man's picture that was hidden at the back of an old photo album, his moving smile, was one thing her mother despised. There were no other pictures of him. None on display and only just that one kept for Rose. There wasn't even that many at her other gran's house. The one she went to once a month for tea.

There was the school she knew she would attend in three years. The one she'd have to leave her mum for and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to go. Her uncle spoke well of it, nostalgia always creeping over his face and glazing his eyes—just enough to trick him into buying her another bag of taffies from the shop in the Alley.

They didn't go there except once a month and never on the same day. Too many people recognized her mum. They wanted to shake her hand, give her a discount, and catch a glimpse of Rose. It felt like being on display in the zoo. Only she had no pretty habitat behind glass to hide in. They could just reach right out and touch her.

Rose skirted around a couple in matching trousers and shirts, the object of her desire in plain view now. The shop door was so close. She could smell the paper and ink from memory alone.

She was ever so close. Until she wasn't.

"Omph!"

Rose would have fallen over if not for the two large, pale hands which grasped her shoulders. Her eyes had been so focused on the shop front that she'd completely missed the man. Her eyes lifted on their own—up, up, and up—until she found a grey-eyed man with nearly white blond hair. He had an aristocratic chin and a nose that was sharp but not quite pointy. He had cheekbones like the royals. His hair was clipped short and brushed back from his face. It would have been a cold face if not for the way his full lips began to quirk in amusement. He looked like he could have walked right off the pages of one of those Burberry ads in the magazine her mother pretended she didn't sign up for.

"Careful there," he said, his posh accent suggesting wealth, as if his black coat didn't do that for him.

"Sorry," she said. She pointed. "I was trying to reach the shop before my mum."

He leaned down the tiniest bit, not so much as to be creepy but to have a more even conversation with a child.

"She's close by then? We'll wait here for her to catch up. I don't imagine she'll be thrilled if you've gotten lost. What's your name?"

Stranger danger? Did that apply here? Well, her mum really wasn't far off. She was just so slow. She hated running. She did that yoga thing a few times a week and claimed that was exercise enough for her.

"Rose." She stuck her hand out and jerked her chin in the air.

Some odd emotion washed across his face and he eyed her hand before he met it with one of his own.

"Lovely to meet you, Rose. I'm Draco."