A/N: This story is rated R because it deals with adult situations,
such as language, sex, and a couple of rather descriptive gory scenes. Proceed
with caution if you can't handle it.
Trepidation of a Rose
Chapter One: A Few
Broken Snow Globes
Mundungus Fletcher was especially pleased when two young witches decided to buy his two bedroom flat in Hogsmeade. He had been wanting to get rid of the flat for months and hoped to retire in the country- the rising power of a Dark wizard, Voldemort, just made him even more eager to leave the magical community because he didn't want to get blown to bits by Death Eaters, thank you very much.
He watched warily as the witch he
met Apparated out of his living room, off to find her friend and share the
news, and the two girls would both be back later that night prepared to move
in. He'd already given her the key,
made sure she knew that the kitchen sink faucet always leaked a bit, and been
paid his Galleons. Now he was ready to go, and with a flick of his wand, his
entire wardrobe, furniture, everything was packed into a small briefcase. 'The
power of magic,' he thought, still marveling that he'd packed his entire
house into a briefcase.
He paused briefly on the doorstep,
grinning ruefully, pleased at the thought he'd never have to see the house
again. Then he Apparated away; away from the painfully, bright sun that glared
above in the brilliant cloudless sky.
* * * * * * * * *
"Sera!"
The disgruntled wail echoed
throughout the kitchen, making the little girl sitting on top of the mahogany
table giggle hysterically, her coffee colored curls bouncing around her angelic
face merrily.
"Ugh!" The young woman grunted,
trying in vain to tug out the clumps of flour that stuck to her fiery red hair
like glue. "Oh, you think that's funny,
do you?" The woman slowly advanced on
the little girl, grabbed her sides, and tickled her unmercifully. The little
girl shrieked with laughter, as the two covered themselves with even more
flour.
That's how Natalie Wisorka found
them, rolling on the floor, laughing so hard they were crying. "More often than
said, I question your sanity, Lily."
Lily Evans grinned sheepishly up
at her best friend, impatiently brushing her flour-caked hair out of her eyes.
"What're you doing here?" Lily asked, offering a hand to her younger cousin,
who was scrubbing flour off her cheeks with her hands unsuccessfully.
"You'll never guess what
happened!" Natalie cried, picking Sera up off the floor and twirling her around
the kitchen, amidst cookbooks, peanut butter, and (what seemed like) pounds and
pounds of flour.
"You've just won a thousand
Galleons, and Sirius finally proposed?" Lily quipped, as the timer on the stove
rang. As Lily turned to pull the cookies out of the oven, she caught Natalie
pulling a face. Sirius and Natalie had been dating on and off since they were
sixteen years old; yet both were terrified of commitment and just how serious their relationship could get if they
stayed together long enough, and it was obvious from Natalie's expression that
they were on the disreputable latter part of the deal.
"Even better," Natalie sighed, but
with contentment or not, Lily couldn't tell as she couldn't see her face. As
Lily pulled out a pan with a dozen burnt chocolate chip cookies loaded unto it,
Natalie said, "I've found us a flat!"
A few cookies slid off the pan as
Lily turned around in shock, hitting the floor like rocks. "Really? A flat?
What's it like? Where is it? How did-"
Natalie waved her hand, not
missing a beat. "It's in Hogsmeade, it's got two bedrooms, a really small
kitchen, but it doesn't matter because neither of us can cook all that well, a
bathroom, and a den, and you can even bring Gandalf!"
Perhaps he thought he'd been
called, or maybe because he smelled the cookies, because Gandalf the cat
sauntered into the kitchen then, his tail held high. Gandalf was a snowy white
ball of fur, with an odd black marking on his right ear- Lily said it looked
like a broken heart, James Potter, Lily and Natalie's friend of seven, long,
often arduous years, said it resembled a decapitated cockroach; but James was
bit biased as Gandalf had scratched him in their fifth year.
Gandalf jumped unto the counter,
and begin to nibble on a cookie but went unnoticed since his owner seemed to
have finally lost her marbles. "When can we move in?" Lily squealed, abandoning
her cookies to crash unto the floor so she could throw handfuls of flour into
the air, as an act of celebration.
"As soon as we want," Natalie
answered, conjuring a broom, and being the compulsive neat freak she was, begin
sweeping up the heaps of flour and bits of chocolate that covered the typically
sparkling floor- usually so clean you could eat off of it.
"That's fantastic!" Lily laughed,
and picked up Sera from the wrath of Natalie with her broom, and spun her
giddily around the room, traipsing flour over parts of the floor Natalie had
already cleaned. Natalie rolled her eyes, exasperated at her friend, but used
to her oddness.
"Are you leaving me and mummy?"
Sera inquired, clutching desperately to Lily's shirt as Lily tipped her over.
Lily stopped twirling, and frowned a bit, not looking even more beautiful then
when she smiled.
"Well, yes, sweetie I am. But you
know that Nat and I have been looking for our own house for awhile now, and I
can't stay here and live with you and Aunt Auliera forever."
"Yes you can. I'll let you play
with my dolls and sleep in my bed and-" Sera protested, pouting innocently, as only
a child can.
"Sera," Lily said, a bit of clout
in her voice now. "You know I can't stay. But I'll come and visit you every
time I can, and you can come visit us whenever you want- or rather, whenever
Auliera chooses to stop being such a hermit and go out into the world." Lily
stopped herself short, realizing her cousin had no idea what she was talking
about and was likely to tell her mommy her unappreciative niece had called her
a crab, which would just spew her aunt even more.
"You're one to talk!" Natalie
commented, pulling a face at the red head's back. "May I say that before
Michael, you were a bit of a recluse yourself - but I daresay that you're now the queen of snogging! And I
thought I didn't have any competition as the reigning queen." Natalie grinned
sardonically, softening the bite, with her wide grin.
"Natalie!"
Lily flushed feverishly, her eyes darting to her young cousin who'd now want to
know what snogging was. Lily was about as subtle as a freight train, with its
earsplitting horn in your left ear.
Natalie
just smirked jovially, and behind her, Gandalf chocked on a clomp of burnt
chocolate.
* * * * * * * * *
Sirius
Black found satisfaction in surprises, and often assumed other people
appreciated them as much as he did. Therefore, it didn't stun James Potter very
much when his best friend lurched out of his grand fireplace, later that
morning, covered from the tips of his ear length jet black hair to his polished
black boots in ashes.
"Would
it be too much to ask to of you to clean it out every once in awhile?" Sirius
muttered with mild indignation, frantically swiping the dust from his perfectly
pressed jeans. For someone who played the role as the rebel, Sirius sure didn't
dress the part. His shirts and jeans were always ironed, his hair always
combed, not a strand of hair out of place, his boots so shiny that if he looked
down, he'd be able to meet his reflection as easily as if he was looking into a
mirror. He was, according to a fair share of witches, " a hunk, with a capital
H." Sirius had a sharp tongue, wit and
charm, and was the heir to one of the oldest magical families to boot.
James
merely glanced briefly up to meet his friends curious hazel eyes, then continued
to scribble hastily on a rather bent piece of parchment, pausing every couple
of seconds to think of what to write.
"Where
are your parents, old boy?" Sirius asked languidly, laying out on the rug in
front of the fireplace, which hosted many photographs, all of them taken by a
the Potters' wizard camera, and most of them were of James- stretched across
the years, from James on a broomstick at age four, to the most recent, a
picture of him at his graduation from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where
he'd been the top of class.
"Out,"
James mumbled, reaching across his lap to grab a large book that had been
resting on his coffee table (his bible now a days it seemed), Advanced Magic
for an Auror. He exhaled nosily a Sirius saw the profound shadows that were
under James's bright eyes, and that his dark brown hair looked even more
disheveled then usual, and that his round black glasses had slipped down past
the bridge of his nose in a true blue James fashion.
Sirius
settled down on the floor, sighing with aggravation. It was best to not agitate
James while he was working, unless you wanted to be bodily debilitated. And
lately, you were in for worse than a first-rate smack on the side of your head
if you dared to query him while he worked. James was working heatedly under
Alastor Moody, the legendary Auror who could spot a Death Eater a mile off, in
training to become an 'underground' Auror. As far as Sirius could see, the job
only offered meticulous hours trekking Dark wizards, catching them, and not
even having the privilege to boast about catching the sorry bastards for
trepidation that Death Eaters would come after your family.
Even
so, James was unrelenting- it was the only thing he'd ever wanted to be, and
regardless of the threat of death and his mothers' tears, he continued his
training with Alastor in secret, with only Sirius and his parents knowing where
he disappeared to for work- sometimes for days on end. Whenever he walked in
the front door, covered in scratches and bruises, his father would look up from
the Daily Prophet, and as he'd turn the front page, he'd grunt, "Just grin and bare it, boy." James did just that, as he would hobble up
to his room to nurse his wounds, battle scars from other in training Aurors, as
they practiced on one another.
"Is
there any particular reason you … er- popped in?" James asked, putting his
quill down, realizing he'd get no work done with Sirius in the vicinity.
"Well,
now that you bring it up, yes," Sirius grinned, propping his head on the end of
a plum colored couch. He drummed on his chest, trying to get a rise out of
James by not fully answering his question. James knew Sirius far too well to be put off, but he rolled his eyes
exasperatedly anyway.
"Stop
being a pompous asshole Sirius, or I'm afraid I'll have to give you a good kick
in the shins."
Sirius
grin broadened, but he tried his hardest to look abashed. "Well, if that's how
you're going to be about it, I wont tell you."
James,
the better actor of the two, just shrugged, and went back to his work,
appearing to not care more or less. After several minutes of straining silence,
Sirius couldn't take it any longer, and burst out laughing. James dropped his
quill, and with raised eyebrows asked, "So?"
"Natalie and Lily have found a flat. In Hogsmeade."
James
continued to stare blankly into Sirius's face. "That's the big news?" he asked,
determined to keep his lips pressed together in a straight line. The corners of
his lips were deceiving him though, of course, twitching just slightly upward.
"Yes,"
Sirius said, still smiling, wondering when his friend would break down and
agree to help them pack Natalie's three closets of clothes.
"Hmmmm. That's nice," James said, looking down at his parchment, but instead of seeing his illegible scrawl, he met the image of Lily Evans stubbing her toe as she lugged a huge box into a wall. "Fine, I'll help," James said with the burden of one who'd just be asked to fight the front line in a bloody war. He tossed aside his report, along with his quill and book, and stretched.
"Good. We might as well head off then. I told Natalie we'd be there as soon as I could get you. Although know that I think about it, we'll probably get there before the owl does."
"I know
that I could get there before the owl does. I don't need to use
Floo Powder to travel everywhere. I passed my Apparition test. I
–"
"- Am
going to get pushed off the nearest bridge. You don't have to rub it in,
Prongs." Sirius said, grabbing a handful of Floo Powder from James's table.
"But
it's so much fun, Padfoot."
"Hardy
Har Ha," Sirius cackled dryly, stepping in front of the fireplace.
"My heart bleeds for you," James said, then instantly disappeared from where'd he'd been standing.
Sirius
tossed in the green powder, coughing out the name Lily's aunts house was called
(although her aunt was a muggle, she was connected so that Sirius could drop in
when he wanted).
"The
Hacienda!"
* * * * * * * * *
Lily was
walking back to her bed, where Sera had been tossing socks in a box, when James
appeared in the doorway. Lily grinned at him over the pile of shirts in her
arms, and tossed them into the bed. "Hullo James. Come to help?"
James
leaned casually against the doorway, nodding to Natalie, who had been bent over
another large cardboard box labeled Lily's Stuff, throwing in papers and
books, and whatever else happened to fall into her hands. "I thought I could be
of assistance."
"Well, I'm
not sure you can be. Your arch-rival is across the room, perched on that
window," Lily tried to say with a straight face, pointing innocently to Gandalf
who was staring at James through his orange eyes.
James
pulled a face at the cat, who continued to stare, unblinkingly at him. He
sighed dolefully, and said, "I'm afraid we'll never get along. But I still want
to help you lot out."
"Good.
See those drawers over there?" James nodded. "Empty them into this box," Lily
directed, gesturing to the box she was putting pillows into.
Lily's
room was of average size, with pale lavender walls, and French doors that led
to a small balcony that overlooked the city of Kent. Her aunt Auliera had
offered to help her paint her walls the summer after her sixth year- the year
her mother and father were killed in a brutal car crash. Auliera had opened her
house to her two nieces, and while Lily was only home during the summer,
Petunia lived there while she went to the local college. Auliera's husband, Dustin
Cohen, had been gunned down before the birth of his daughter, Sera, in Paris.
The four worked in silence for a
few uneventful minutes, until loud footsteps were heard pounding up the flight
of stairs to Lily's room.
"Whose
that?" Lily asked, reaching for her wand, looking at Natalie and James, her bottle
green eyes wide.
"Alright,
I'm here," came a male, booming voice. Lily smiled fondly as Sirius careened
into the room, tripping over James's foot, causing the two men to push each
other good-humoredly.
Sera
sat back on the bed, waiting impatiently for Sirius to acknowledge her
presence. As Sirius often dropped by, Sera had come to know him well, and she
enjoyed him very much, because as she told her mother, he "plays with my dolls
with me."
Sirius
held his arms out, and made a chocking sound as Sera wrapped her arms around
his neck tightly. "Hello dearest," he grinned handsomely, his hazel eyes
bright.
"Will
you come play with me?" Sera asked hopefully, tugging on Sirius's hand.
"Well…"
Sirius glanced at the other three who had made considerable progress by
themselves. "Sure."
Lily
continued to move the contents of her closet to a box, listening to Sera's soft
voice, as it floated from her room down the hall. "But Ms. Nesbitt, won't you
stay for tea?"
And
Sirius would answer in a high, feminine voice, "Well, just a cup, I suppose,
Ms. Kroll."
It was the
sound of breaking glass, that jarred Lily from her thoughts. She raced from the
room, to find Sirius holding Sera protectively against his chest, bits of glass
and water covering the floor around them. "What happened?" Lily asked, and
Sirius grinned sheepishly.
"We
seem to have broken this thing…" he trailed off, holding up one of Petunia's precious snow globes.
"Oh
Sirius," Lily grimaced. "Petunia will have my head. She collects these globes,
can't you see?" She gestured to the globes that adorned her sister's night table.
"I take
full responsibility, and if she pesters you, tell her to sod off."
"I wish it were that easy," Lily sighed, and with a flick of her wand, the glass had disappeared.
Sirius
frowned, and carried Sera out of the room. "It is, Lily. It is."
Lily trailed
after them, brushing her hair off her face, and when she walked into her room
again, she was pleased to see that everything had been boxed up, and James was
magically stacking everything on top of her bed. She studied him carefully, the
way his hair flopped into his eyes, and that he pursued his lips when he was concentrating
hard. Without even realizing it, she was standing in the doorway, a wide smile
lighting up her face.
Natalie
took notice of this, but kept her lips sealed. "Well, we're done. Let's take go
grab a bite to eat, and then I think we're ready to get the show on the road."
Lily
nodded in agreement, and opened her mouth to offer a suggest as to where they
should eat, but the sound of the front door opening cut her off.
"Lily,
I'm home!" the voice cried.
Lily
glanced at her three friends and her cousin, and muttered, "Oh no."