A/N: Just wanted to take a quick second to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who's reviewed/favourited/followed up to this point. You guys seriously make my day.
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Chapter Five
Rose
"Don't worry, I'm sure they will have forgotten all about the incident at Nana's," Hugo said, steering his older sister towards the front door of their parents' house. Rose, weakly protesting, attempted to dig in her heels to no avail. Her brother was nearly twice her size.
"Come on, Ro," he said, relieving his grip on her arms and crossing his own in front of his rather impressive chest. "What are you so afraid of?"
"Mum and Dad've suspected I'm a fuck up for the past few months, Hugo," she said, her voice steel, "And ever since Al's little outburst, they know I am."
"You're not a fuck up," her brother said, wrinkling his freckled face at her. "Not that much of one, anyway."
She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed. "Come on, munchkin," he said, a nickname he knew she hated, considering Rose was the elder sibling. He smirked at the face she pulled and started again towards the house. "You can't hang out in the garden forever."
Rose sighed and followed him in.
The smells that hit her immediately made her eyes start to water, and Rose turned towards the wall to remove her scarf so that her brother wouldn't see the annoying tears that'd immediately sprung to her eyes. She could almost hear the laughter in this house, feel its radiating warmth that had permeated her childhood. Somehow, though, she no longer felt as if she belonged to the house. It was a curious thing, coming home to a place that had been frozen in time only to find you were the one who had changed.
"Mum?" Hugo called out, making his way through the house in the direction of Hermione's home office. Rose followed him, holding her breath for some odd reason.
"In here," came the sound of her mother's voice, accompanied by the rustling of papers. They entered the bright and cosy office to find their mother seated at her large oak desk, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and several very official-looking documents open in front of her. Her light brown hair had begun to spring from her elegant updo, curling in tendrils around her face. Rose noticed that several of her mum's grey hairs stood out prominently in the low light that shone in from the impressive arched windows behind where she sat. The late afternoon sun filtered in, lighting the place and dancing off the bright yellow walls of the study. Rose suddenly remembered taking a family holiday to Italy when she was a child, and her mother becoming besotted with the expansive fields of sunflowers throughout Tuscany. When they'd returned to England, Rose's father had decorated Hermione's study for her - "sunflower yellow", they'd always called it.
"Rose," Hermione said, looking up with surprise. "We weren't expecting you tonight."
"I bribed her," Hugo said, and Rose trod on his toes in retaliation. "I told her we'd make a banoffee pie."
"That's - that's lovely dear, why don't the two of you get started and I'll come to join you?" the older witch said, shuffling her papers. "I'm just nearly done looking over the notes for this trial case."
"Where's dad?" Hugo said, looking around as if all six feet and three inches of their father was hidden somewhere among the bookshelves.
"Your father's been called into the Ministry," she said, trying to make her voice sound light and nonchalant. It was a trick Rose knew well, one that meant her mother was masking some deeper emotion. "There was a case that the Auror department needed his help with."
"But dad hasn't worked for the Auror department since we were kids," Rose said from the doorway.
Her mother's brown eyes met her own, and Rose was startled to see the worry in them.
"It's just one case," she said, looking back to her papers. "Why don't you two wash up and start with making the pastry? I'll be in in a minute." She turned back to her notes, ending the conversation.
Rose followed her brother into the large family kitchen and immediately hopped up onto the wide countertop. Hugo made his way through the various cupboards, removing the ingredients they would need and placing them next to Rose on the counter.
"They're hiding something from us, Mum and Dad are." Rose told him.
"If they are, I'm sure they have good reason," Hugo said, always the practical sibling.
"Don't you want to know why?" Rose asked incredulously. "Dad always said he was happy not to work for the Auror department anymore, because he was too old to be in the line of fire. What could be so serious that he would go back?"
"I don't know, Rose," Hugo huffed, placing his hands on his hips. "But I'm sure they'll tell us if it's important."
"Hmmmm," Rose hummed, unsatisfied, but made no reply. Instead, she drummed her fingers on the countertop and watched as her brother began to make the shortcrust pastry and homemade toffee. He whistled a bit to himself as he stirred together the sauce with slow spiral motions of his wand. Once it had begun to cool, she dipped her fingers into the caramelly goo, earning herself a sharp slap on the wrist from Hugo.
"If you're not going to help, go and see what's held Mum up," he suggested.
Rose rolled her eyes, but heeded his advice and hopped off the counter, padding her way to the office again. At the doorway, she paused when she heard noises from within. Rose debated for a moment, then ultimately the curiosity got the better of her. She pressed her ear to the slightly cracked open door, and was surprised to hear her father's voice from inside.
"-one of the more confusing cases I've seen, Hermione," he was saying, though his voice was muffled by the crackling of the fire. Rose realized her mother must be speaking to him through the floo. "His mind has no obvious signs of being tampered with, but he has no recollection at all of the Wizarding world. Everything involving magic seems to be blurred over, or replaced with new memories."
"How is that possible? Was anyone else involved?"
"We found a house elf tied up in the closet, but she says she never saw her attacker's face" Ron admitted, and her mother made a strangled noise of grief. Rose knew she'd always had a soft spot for elves. "We have Boyd and Wilkinson on the case of retrieving Goyle's memories, but they've yet to make any progress. It's all incredibly thorough, I've never seen anything like it. But it's the oddest thing - the flat was all very clean, very tidy. No sign of a struggle, nothing stolen at all. Somebody either knew what they were doing or cleaned up the mess afterwards. Harry's treating it now as a memory charm gone wrong, but I don't think that's the case. I think modifying his memory was the purpose of the attack, not a side effect. The attacker left just one clue - a note. It's been analysed by the Department of Mysteries but they've been unable to decipher it as of yet. Harry's owled it to you for investigation - we'll follow up with the Runes experts tomorrow."
Rose breathed in sharply through her nostrils and leant closer to the crack in the door.
"But who would be targeting Gregory Goyle?" her mother mused quietly, so that Rose had to strain to hear.
"The real question is," her father countered, "Who could be capable of doing this?"
They continued to discuss in low voices, and Rose backed away slowly from the door, trying to make sense of what she'd overheard. Rose returned to the kitchen, her ears ringing with the conversation between her parents. She'd heard her father mention a Goyle sporadically throughout her childhood - mainly when telling stories of their own school days, and never in a positive light. She was fairly certain that Gregory Goyle and his family hadn't been on her parents' side during the war. It was puzzling, and darkly ironic, that somebody who'd once considered himself above his muggle counterparts now had no recollection of magic at all.
And why had her father been called in for a one-off memory loss case?
Hugo was applying a cooling spell to the finished pie when she re-entered the kitchen. "You didn't help at all," he whined at her.
"Shh, be quiet, listen to what I just-"
"You're done!" Their mother cried, entering the room. Rose clamped her mouth shut immediately.
"Yeah, no thanks to Ro- ow!" Hugo shrieked as Rose stood on his toe.
"It looks delicious," Hermione said, who was immune to the squabbling of her children after twenty or so years of it.
"Nobody touches it until later," Hugo said, using his muscular body as a shield.
"Will dad be home soon?" Asked Rose, who had not forgotten the situation at hand.
"Yes, sometime soon, I imagine," Hermione said, her face a mask of impassivity. Rose's mum has always been a skilled occlumens. "I should get dinner started. Were the two of you going to help, or-"
"Play chess." The siblings chorused, as their mother let out a sigh.
Rose spent several enjoyable hours beating Hugo in chess, and subsequently taunting him after she'd done so. She watched, endlessly amused, as her little brother's ears turned a bright pink with frustration, trying to work out just exactly how she'd bested him yet again.
It was quarter to nine by the time Rose's father arrived home to find his family finishing up their meal. Rose knew her mother had briefed him to let him know she was at the house, because Ron didn't seem surprised to see his daughter at all. He immediately found his plate on the kitchen counter, and removed the warning spell his wife had placed on it.
"Thanks, this looks amazing, Hermione." he said, kissing Hermione's cheek as he sat down.
"It's only pasta," she said, flushing with pleasure as Rose struggled not to gag at her parents' display of flirtation. Rose watched as her mother grabbed her father's freckled hand, as if second nature. Ron seemed to be only mildly inconvenienced by eating with one hand, but responded to the gesture wholeheartedly, rubbing his wife's knuckles with his thumb. Rose felt her throat close up slightly upon noticing their blatant and obvious affection for one another.
"How was work, dad?" She asked quickly, sitting up straight and raising her eyebrows at her father. Blue eyes that matched her own looked back, giving away nothing.
"Fine," he said, tucking into his food with gusto. "Always interesting to be back with the Auror office."
"Everything all right at the Ministry?" she wheedled, hoping he'd give away something in his face that betrayed any emotion.
"No crazier than usual," he replied with his mouth partially full.
"So what was the case about?" Rose persisted, cupping her chin in her hands and leaning towards him.
"You know that's classified information, Rosie," he said, smiling at her, "couldn't tell you if I wanted to." he smirked, and Rose immediately rankled at the joke. Logically, she knew her temper was getting the better of her, but she hated when her father treated her as if she were a dumb little kid again. Giving a frustrated huff, she rose from the table.
"It's late," she announced to the room as a whole. "I really should be getting back."
"But you haven't had any pie," her mother said, her eyes wide as she looked up at her daughter.
"I'm stuffed, mum, I don't think I could eat another bite."
"Okay," Hermione said, obviously disappointed. "Well it was lovely to see you, Rose, please make sure you come again soon. And take some pie home with you, you look rather thin."
"I will," she said, because it was easier to go along. She allowed her mum to package up a large bit of pie and hugged each of her family members, her father even pausing in shoveling food in his mouth to give her a slightly sticky spaghetti-sauce kiss on her forehead.
"Can I use the floo, mum?" Rose asked.
"Of course," her mother replied, already distracted by cleaning up the dinner. "There's a full pot on the mantle in my office."
Rose made her way to her mother's study, and was about to grab the powder to throw in the fire when she glanced at the papers on the large desk. Quickly checking to be sure she could still hear the family's chatter from the kitchen, she made her way over to the impressive oak surface.
There were several layers of ministry crap that Rose didn't bother to read; several legal-looking documents and the blueprints for some new expansion of Diagon Alley. Shoved to the side, however, was a letter in thick, marbled parchment. The seal on the envelope was one Rose didn't recognize - a thin crescent moon on pitch black wax. She picked it up, curiosity overcoming her, and opened the envelope in one quick movement. There were several spiky black runes that looked nothing like Rose'd ever seen before scattered along the parchment in no decipherable pattern, but three words were written at the bottom. The sloping cursive took a few seconds for Rose to be able to decipher, but once she did, she frowned at the words scratched out on the parchment.
It read; "To Be Continued." There was no signature.
Rose didn't feel much like going out, which was exactly why she eventually decided to go. If she stayed home and moped, she knew she'd eventually end up drinking a full bottle of wine by herself and find herself in Rhys' bed by morning. So instead of self-medicating and shagging arsehole Slytherins, she invited Lily over, put on the latest Hopping Hippogriffs album, and began the arduous task of straightening her wild head of hair with her wand. She was partway through this process when she heard the crackling of flames in her fire, and her cousin stepped out.
Lily was balancing several bottles of butterbeer in one arm, and several wickedly high pair of heels in the other. Her dark auburn bobbed hair was standing on end and sparking with static, as if she'd just rolled out of bed before heading over to Rose's. The red mark on her cousin's cheek that looked suspiciously like the imprint of a pillow confirmed her suspicions.
"I got us reservations," she said, by way of greeting, unceremoniously dumping the bottles on Rose's sofa and grabbing one for herself.
"Reservations where?" Rose asked, summoning a bottle and uncorking it with her wand. "I thought we were just going to the Leaky Cauldron."
"Nope," Lily said, smiling impishly. "A friend of mine's roommate is the bouncer for that new club, Sonorus? He's put us on the VIP list for the night."
Rose was ready to remark that Lily was the daughter of the arguably best-known celebrity in wizarding Britain and didn't need to pull strings to get onto a guest list, but tactfully held her tongue. Instead, she looked at the dark trousers and button-up her cousin was wearing, and wrinkled her nose. "You're wearing that?" Rose said, shaking her head at her hopeless tomboy of a cousin.
Lily shrugged sheepishly, "I was hoping I could raid your closet?" she suggested. Rose smirked and grabbed Lily by one thin arm.
"Come with me." she said, leading the younger girl into her bedroom.
By the time Rose was satisfied with the outfits both she and Lily were wearing, it was gone ten o'clock and the girls had made their way through the butterbeer and were on to something a bit harder. Rose finished her glass of daisyroot draught and giggled at the sight of her cousin wobbling on her heels, already feeling the effects of the alcohol warming her body. Lily laughed along with her, her cheeks flushed with mirth.
"Oh sweet Merlin, we need to go!" the younger witch said, grabbing Rose's arm for stability as she noticed the clock on the wall. "I told Harrison we'd be there by ten!"
"And we can't keep Harrison waiting, now can we?" Rose waggled her eyebrows, but still grabbed her wand in preparation of heading out the door.
"Bugger off, Rosie," Lily said, turning even pinker and following her cousin out of the flat.
The two of them apparated, finding themselves in front of a the nightclub, which was already heaving with people spilling out onto the street, smoking different brightly coloured substances and bobbing along to music that Rose couldn't hear. Once they crossed the street, however, she immediately felt as if she'd stepped into a bubble where the noise became amplified and the lights became a bit brighter.
"It's an atmospheric charm," Lily shouted above the sound of the music, "Harrison told me about it. Keeps the neighbours from complaining about the noise." Rose nodded appreciatively.
They had no trouble getting in; even with their names on the VIP list, the doorman recognized the girls immediately. Soon, Lily had found her mate Harrison, and sent a cheeky wink over her shoulder at her cousin as she followed him onto the dance floor. Rose watched them for a moment, sipping on a drink and silently commending Lily for her choice in men. Harrison wasn't an Adonis by any means, but he had a cute crooked smile and a boyish charm that matched the younger girl's energy. They swayed together, and Lily laughed at something he'd said.
Rose surveyed the dance floor, the bright and happy faces of witches and wizards who were intoxicated by the alcohol and the club's atmosphere, magical or otherwise. She smiled, but it felt plastic and false. Suddenly, she longed for the comfort of her own bed.
"Didn't fancy a dance?" a voice came from behind her.
Rose turned to see familiar blue eyes trained on her. Toby's gaze glanced over her body, lingering on her chest lewdly, and she crossed her arms, trying to seem unaffected even as her heart felt as if it could beat out of its chest. He looked good, as he usually did, with his hair falling just so and his biceps straining against the casual but fashionable robes he wore.
"What do you want?" she asked, not even gracing his question with an answer.
He had the audacity to look affronted. "Just wanted to see how you're doing, Rosie," he said, his eyebrows raising, a stupid little smirk playing on his face. "Am I not allowed to care about you anymore?"
"Don't pretend you ever cared about me," she scoffed, finishing her drink and slamming it down on the bar, rather forcefully. She was pleased when he flinched slightly. "Don't speak to me again," she warned, her chest tight, feeling as if she were dangerously close to tears. Determined to retain the upper hand, Rose turned on her heel and walked away, her breath coming up short and raspy. Pushing through the crowd, she left the club, desperate for a bit of fresh air.
She emerged from the crowd, bursting through the atmosphere charm and feeling as if she could finally breathe again. Rose stood on the corner, gasping for a moment, forcefully telling herself not to cry. It'd been six months since she'd seen Toby, six months since he'd walked out, and she'd spent the majority of that time attempting to block out any memory of him. Now, faced with him in the flesh, Rose felt the sting of the break-up all over again. She shook her head, feeling her shiny straightened hair glide across her bare back, and wished for the familiarity of her messy curls.
A group of wizards were approaching the club, laughing and obviously intoxicated. Rose held her breath and ducked, letting a thick sheet of hair cover her face from view, but it was too late.
"Hey, are you Rose Granger-Weasley?" one of them asked, hanging back from the group. He glanced at her bare legs, tracing up her body, as if he were devouring her.
"No." she said, and kept on walking.
The world was unbearably dizzy, and Rose tottered on her heels down Diagon Alley, wondering if she was too drunk to work out where Selwyn lived. She was considering apparating despite her intoxication when she surprisingly spotted a familiar shock of white-blond hair up ahead.
"Malfoy!" she said, making him jump. She vaguely recognized that he had a bag of shopping with him and was heading in what must have been the direction of the flat he shared with Albus. He seemed shocked to see her, or perhaps just worried about her safety in heels on the cobbled stones, because he reached out for her as if involuntarily, setting his shopping down to support her weight as she leaned on him. She was very close to him now, and she could count the number of his light blond eyelashes as he stared down at her. He was only just barely taller than her when she was in her heels, and his eyes looked almost translucent, they were such a light grey. He looked as if he were to say speak, probably to say something stupid and smarmy. Godric, she hated his clever little quips, and his stupid hair, too. The world was still spinning around her.
"Shut up," she said before he had a chance to get anything out, and roughly grabbed the back of his neck to forcefully press her lips to his, desperately seeking something or someone to anchor herself to.