Disclaimer: Nothing you recognise belongs to me.
Chapter Eleven:
Rose
Rose had never been a crier.
Her cousin Lily, by comparison, was practically a human water spout. Though as children, Lily had always been the tough tomboy whereas Rose was more creative, more openly in tune with her emotions, somewhere along the line her well of emotion had run dry. As for Lily, Rose suspected the tough exterior was simply an act - a defense mechanism from having two rather insensitive older brothers.
In the twenty-four hours that followed the attack of her mother, Rose shed not one tear. It wasn't that she didn't feel the loss - it was her mother, for Merlin's sake - but she rather felt as if her dissolving into grief would just be unhelpful considering the circumstances. Her father was a wreck, Hugo had been wandering the house as if lost and confused, and Albus was currently throwing a tantrum of an astronomical size. So, Rose remained stoic. She made countless rounds of tea, she distracted Hugo by taking him flying, she made sure her father was eating. She was helpful.
It was odd how instantly her life had changed. Where she'd been actively avoiding her parents' house recently, Rose now felt as if she couldn't leave. It was just as difficult to remain, though. Everywhere were little reminders of her mother - a note in the kitchen detailing the dinner menu for the week, her favourite lilac-coloured jumper casually strewn about a chair in the sitting room that nobody had dared to move. The family were acting as if she and Harry were dead, rather than perfectly well in St. Mungos - barring their memories, of course. It wasn't as if her mother ceased to exist, just that her body remained but her life had been erased.
She hadn't been to visit the hospital since the day of the attack. Her father and Hugo had gone, but Rose has remained behind. Tidying up the house, running errands. Being helpful.
It was Thursday before she saw Albus again. She had been pulling weeds in her mother's garden, despite the slight drizzle of rain that beat upon her back and made her hair go frizzy. There was one stubborn root that would not come up no matter how hard she tugged - her wand sat uselessly in her back pocket. Her mother had always gardened the Muggle way.
She had nearly gotten that damned root out when there was a loud Crack! beside her that made her jump. Albus had appeared, an unreadable expression on his face.
"You need to come with me," he said without preamble.
"Sorry?" she asked, squinting up at him through the rain.
"Come on, Rose, we haven't got time for this." He said, grabbing her by the shoulders and hoisting her off the ground. "Meet me at my flat in about five seconds," he said, before vanishing again with another loud Crack!
Albus had always been a loud apparator. Rose has always assumed it was his own special version of slamming the door.
She paused to consider his proposition. She's never given much credence to Albus' demands in the past, and there was no real no real reason she should start following them now. In fact, he'd been properly unbearable since the hospital, and she wasn't particularly thrilled at the chance to spend more time with her moody cousin. She had work to do around the house.
However, her father was at the Ministry, working again on the case. Hugo was out of the house at a friend's and was unlikely to be back before dinner. Her curiosity prickled the back of her mind.
Rose sighed, giving the stubborn weed one last look before yanking off her gardening gloves. "I'll be back," she told the weed, and turned on her heel, letting off a (slightly less dramatic) Crack! of her own.
Though she'd inexplicably found herself there rather often recently, Rose wasn't sure if she'd ever been to her cousin's flat whilst entirely sober before. Certainly, she'd never paused to really have a good look at the place. It was a mishmash of styles - it was terribly clear where Al's stuff ended and Scorpius' began. While Al had inherited the Weasley gene that drove them to compulsively horde random knick-knacks in a haphazard, messy fashion, Scorpius' things were fastidious and - dear Godric, entirely alphabetized. His bookshelf containing every book under the sun (Rose's fingers itched for a title or two - she was her mother's daughter, after all) looked very odd next to Al's untidy workbench of various magical flora.
The boys were hunched over something at the dining table. "Took you long enough," Al told her, unhelpfully, when he saw she'd appeared.
Scorpius glanced up at her, barely acknowledging her presence. "Oh good, we're all here then," he said distractedly. There were bags under his eyes and several empty coffee mugs on the table beside him that made Rose wonder if he'd been sleeping at all.
"What's this all about then?" She asked, frowning. Her hands came to rest on her hips in an action that immediately reminded her of her mother. She self-consciously adjusted her stance.
Al nervously looked up at Rose from his perch beside his mate at the table. "You'll have to explain it, mate," he told the blond. Rose didn't care who explained, just as long as the two of them stop being so annoyingly cryptic.
Scorpius glanced back up at her, his slightly too-long hair flopping into his eyes. He flicked it back, rolled up his shirtsleeves and sighed. She noticed his hands were fidgeting with the quill he held. "We've been working on a runic case from America," he started, his eyes flickering to hers, then back to the book in front of him. "I was struggling with the case, and Aubrey was helping me with it. I found it on his desk the day after he was attacked."
"Bertram Aubrey? From the article in the papers?" She asked, the name ringing a bell.
He nodded. "He's my colleague - was my colleague."
"So what does this have to do with us?" Rose asked, still confused.
"I think," Scorpius started, biting his lip, "I think he left a message just before he was attacked. Just here, in this book. I think it has to do with the runes he was working on."
Rose's breath caught in her throat. "What does it say?" She asked, after gathering herself for a moment. He shoved the book towards her, and she squinted at the phrase on the page, inked in spiky black handwriting. She frowned.
"I don't get it," she said, frustrated. The strangest sensation in her chest, like a balloon popping, all at once overcame her.
"No," Al said, frowning, "we didn't either." The trio stared at each other, defeated.
"It's got to mean something," Scorpius said, tearing at his hair, "I just don't know what." The cousins looked on as he flipped through the pages of the book.
"If only I could decipher the symbols," he said, his thin fingers tracing over the runes, finding a small inked crescent moon there. "then at least I would have an idea of where to start."
"You were top of our year at Ancient Runes," Rose said, frowning, "You got a job with the best runic firm in England right out of Hogwarts," Scorpius blushed under her blunt praise. "If anyone can work it out, you can."
He shook his head, sighing, "it's all in ancient Native American scripture," he explained. "To decipher it, I would need an expert on native runes, and there aren't any that I know of in Britain. It might be a different case if we were in America, but…" he trailed off.
There was a beat while they all pondered this.
"Then let's go to America," Rose said. The suggestion hung in the air like a cloud, and the silence was so deafening that Rose began to wonder if she'd spoken aloud at all.
"Sorry?" Al said, turning to his cousin. She, however, had her gaze trained on Scorpius, who was looking back at her, his face uncharacteristically blank.
"You really think this means something?" She asked him, ignoring Albus.
He took a moment to respond. "Yes," he finally said, breathing out. "It's a clue - I can feel it."
"Fine," Rose said, folding her arms across her chest, feeling oddly calm and centered. "Then we go to America and find somebody who can translate it."
"Sorry-" Al said again, loudly. "But nobody is going to America. Our home is under attack from some evil, invisible force, and we-" he gestured to himself and Rose, "-are the children of the most high-profile Ministry officials in the country, whose parents have just been attacked. If you think my mum and your dad are going to let us go anywhere, you're barmy."
"I'm not planning on asking permission," Rose retorted, raising one eyebrow in a challenge to her cousin.
They stared at each other for a moment, neither backing down.
"Look," Scorpius stood, his hands spread in what looked to be a peacekeeping gesture, "I can go on my own, neither of you have to-"
"Shut up, mate," Albus growled at him. "You're not going on your own."
Rose smirked.
"Right, it's decided then," she said, unfolding her arms and running her hands through the frizzy mass of her hair. "Malfoy, where in America are we heading, then?"
Scorpius frowned, thinking hard. "The book is a combination of native tribal and Latin-based runic literature," he said finally. "So I would suggest we start in the first place Western settlers and Native Americans had any sort of interaction." He looked at the cousins, as if the answer should be obvious to them. They both looked back blankly. "The first colony? Jamestown?" He said, a bit arrogantly, Rose thought.
"All right then," she said, rolling her eyes. "I've got Ministry contacts, I can sort the international portkeys." The boys nodded. "When can we leave? Is tomorrow okay?"
Albus shuffled his feet nervously. Scorpius glanced back down at the book.
"Day after tomorrow," Rose relented, sensing their reticence to leave straight away. They hastily agreed to her proposal.
"Brilliant," she said, nodding. "Malfoy, you research as much as you can on the early American colonies. Al, if you could write a letter to our family? It's just safer not to explain before we go," she said, "they'd only try to stop us." He assured her he would draft a message.
"Okay," she said, something that felt like hope bubbling in her gut for the first time in days, "okay, we're doing this." She grabbed the boys' hands in each of her own, and squeezed hard.
"I'll see you in the morning" she promised, before turning and apparating off to the Ministry.
It was the first time she'd been back since quitting her job. Rose didn't know why, but she'd expected the place to look different. Realistically, she knew this was unlikely - it had only been just over a week since she'd stormed out, after all, but so much had happened since then. However, the familiar buzz of the atrium met her as she stepped out of the phone booth from the visitor's entrance, a shiny badge on her chest reading, "Rose Weasley, international travel queries". She ducked her head to avoid several people she knew in the lobby as she weaved her way to the elevators, wishing she'd worn a hat or something to keep people from recognizing her.
At least the news of the attack on her mother and uncle was still hush-hush. It would not remain so - such high profile officials could not be out of work for too long without drawing notice, but it meant that there were no reporters in the Ministry, for which Rose was thankful.
She pressed the button for the sixth floor on the elevator and thankfully made it all the way to the Department of Magical Transportation offices without bumping into anyone she knew. Steeling her nerves, she made her way inside.
"Hi," she said, as friendly as possible, when she approached the young wizard at the reception desk. "Rose Weasley, here to see Demetrius Macmillian?" The wizard buzzed her through, looking up at her suspiciously, as if trying to place if she were the same Rose Weasley who had famously stormed out of her Ministry job just the week before. As she made her way to Demetrius' office, Rose noticed a girl in the corner had stopped doing her paperwork to blatantly stare as she passed by. Rose sent the witch her most menacingly sickly-sweet smile, and she stopped staring immediately, going back to her papers with a blush tinting her cheeks. "Nosy bitch," Rose thought, menacingly.
The reception desk wizard had warned Demetrius that she was coming. By the time she made it to his office, he was waiting at the door with a fake smile on his handsome face.
"What a surprise!" He said loudly, obviously his way of announcing to the office that he had no hand in setting up this meeting with the most mentally deranged member of the Weasley family. Come in, come in." He gestured to a plush looking chair squashed into the corner of his tiny office, and Rose sat.
"So, how are you? I must say, I was not expecting you. You look very well, considering..." He said, once he'd settled himself behind his rather large, rather ostentatious oak desk. He tucked a strand of hair back into its perfectly coiffed place as he regarded her. It took her a moment to realize he was talking about her rather dramatic exit from the workforce, and not her mother's attack. He doesn't know, Rose reminded herself.
"I need a portkey to America," she said, not beating around the bush.
Demetrius laughed, as if this were a joke. When she continued to look at him, straight-faced, he became increasingly flustered.
"Well, Rose," he said, fumbling with a quill in his hands, "you must know that last-minute international portkeys are reserved for Ministry employees only…" he let the statement hang in the air, so that she could hear the judgment in his voice. And you're no longer a Ministry employee, it said.
"Yes, well," she folded her hands together on her lap, "I did hope an exception might be made for the family of the Minister of Magic."
"Ah, of course," he said, coming around the front of his desk to sit on it in a practiced casual demeanor, so that Rose could imagine him rehearsing the exact angle of his lean, "this is another matter, to be sure. If your mother can write a letter of permission for you to use the portkey, I can have it arranged straight away."
"I… can't get that letter for you," Rose admitted, "but please, Demetrius, I do need that portkey." She hated the way her voice took on a desperate tone. His eyes flickered, only for a moment.
"I'm sorry, Rose," he said, all business. His mouth was set in such a harsh, straight line, his teeth bared in what could barely be qualified as a proper smile. She couldn't believe she'd once found him even passably attractive. "But I cannot bend the rules for anyone, even an old friend."
"Fine," she said, the word coming out harsher than intended. He flinched slightly, and she stood, breathing slowly out of her nose so that she kept calm. "Thank you for your time today."
"And yours," he said, ushering her to the door as if he couldn't wait to get out. As she walked back through the office, ignoring the pointed stares at her back, he called out "Give my best to your mother."
Rose turned and smiled tightly, then made her way out of the department.
Back in the main hallway, Rose leant against a wall, breathing heavily. She'd finally had a lead, finally something to do to avoid feeling useless, to maybe even help her mother and Uncle Harry, and she'd failed in her first task. If she couldn't even get them to America, how would they ever decipher this clue and help her family?
"Rose? Is that you?" A lilting voice came from behind her. Dreading facing any of her former colleagues, she turned slowly.
There was only one other witch in the hallway, and it took a moment to place her. Her sleek blonde hair was tied into a topknot, and her clear blue eyes were looking at Rose with what seemed to be true concern.
"Eloise," she reminded Rose, when she did not immediately speak. Rose flushed, feeling rude.
"Yes, sorry, I know," she said, trying to flatten her own frizzy hair with her hands. "How are you?"
Eloise did not answer, instead choosing to peer at the other girl curiously. "You're upset," she said, stating it as a fact rather than posing a question.
For whatever reason, this was enough to make Rose's eyes well up. For the first time since the attack, she felt the tears threaten to spill over, in front of this virtual stranger.
Eloise's eyes widened. "Not here," she said, grabbing Rose's arm with a surprisingly strong grasp for such a willowy girl, and dragging her out what looked to be a back exit of the Ministry. Once they were out on the street in Muggle London, they ducked down a nearby mews just in time for Rose to completely lose her composure. She sobbed up against a brick wall as Eloise pat her back, conjuring up several tissues and passing them to Rose as she blubbed.
"Shhh… tout va bien se passer," Eloise murmured to her, rubbing her back in comforting circles. It took some time to stop, but finally Rose felt her eyes begin to dry.
"Are you okay?" Eloise asked when Rose's shoulders stopped shaking.
"Yes, I'm all right," Rose replied, truly embarrassed. "I'm so sorry about that," she said, not meeting the other girl's eyes.
"Oh, pah," Eloise said, waving a hand as if to wave away Rose's apology from the air. "You English are so ashamed of your emotions, you have no need to apologize for feeling strongly about something." She smiled at Rose, who felt it was rather unfair that this girl was not just extremely pretty, but nice as well.
"Still, it was silly of me," Rose replied, wiping the mascara from under her eyes.
She glanced around the deserted mews, looking for anything to distract her from her crippling grief and sense of utter uselessness.
"Perhaps not so silly," Eloise said, leaning against the wall next to her. "Is there anything I can do to help fix it?"
Rose snorted, an unattractive sound that caused her nose to drip rather badly. She wiped it hastily. "Not unless you can get me an illegal portkey to America," she replied.
Eloise did not laugh at her joke the way she expected. Instead, her eyes lit up as she looked at Rose.
"I might just be able to help you," she said slowly, a smile gracing her features.
The bubble of hope returned to Rose's chest again.