Rose Among the Thorns: The Third Evans Sister
By Jedi Blu, Lady at Large
Standard Disclaimer Found Here: I do not own anything that is not mine. Doesn't that make wonderful sense?
Italics are thoughts, emphasized words, or letters. Thank you!
'j'e'd'i'b'l'u'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Detention Occurrences
'j'e'd'i'b'l'u'
Rose was sitting beside the lake, staring out over the water, completely oblivious to what was going on around her at the moment. Here she was, fourteen years old, a witch in a world slowly being torn apart by a war. Her book bag was beside her on the grass, and inside it was a copy of the Daily Prophet, an issue which bore a list of names belonging to the dangerous army called the Deatheaters, the followers of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
"He-Who-Has-A-Stupid-Name," she muttered to herself, thinking. There was nothing but trouble in the world, of that she was convinced. She was also fairly certain things could only get worse at this point. More deaths, more lies, more problems.
"Brooding?" Lily sat down next to her sister, offering her a sympathetic smile. "What's going on?"
"Not much. Just thinking." Rose smiled wanly at her oldest sister, wondering how long it had been since they'd just talked. Tension continued to rise between the two, it seemed, whenever they spoke of anything. "What's going on with you?"
Lily shrugged. "Just trying to be a good prefect, make the grade...you know."
They sat in silence for some time before Lily said, "Have you heard from Petunia lately?"
"Only once," Rose responded. "She asked me to stop writing to her. She said she doesn't want to know anymore what goes on in a school of freaks."
"I guess the whole mice thing is still upsetting her," Lily murmured, lowering her eyes for a moment. "She'll get over it though, right?"
"Eventually," Rose responded. "But Petty is really good at holding grudges."
Lily nodded; she knew their sister as well as Rose did. "Mother wrote me about her the other day. Apparently she has a new boyfriend who's a few years older than she. He's eighteen or something, and his name is...oh, what is it? Vernal? Vernon? Veron? Something like that. Apparently he's pretty well off or something. Mother's worried that Petunia's a little too taken with him."
"Mother always worries about things like that, though," Rose responded dismissively. "Petty may be a brat but she's not stupid. If he's really so much older I wonder why he's bothering with someone who's still just a kid, though. Kind of disgusting if you ask me."
"Severus is two years older than you are," Lily responded softly.
Rose's eyes snapped up to meet those of her sister. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Isn't that kind of disgusting?"
This was treading on dangerous ground, and Lily well knew it.
"Severus and I are friends, Lily," Rose hissed out, turning away angrily. "Only friends."
Lily chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip before asking, "Don't you even have a little crush on him, Rose?"
The younger sister continued to bristle, like a cat when its fur stands on end. "No. No, no, no. He's the only friend I've got, I wouldn't ruin it with feelings he couldn't return."
"How do you know he couldn't return them?" Lily countered.
The incredulous look Rose favored her sister with said it all. "Are you encouraging such feelings or discouraging? I would expect you to tell me to have nothing to do with him."
"I want you to be careful, Rose. He's two years older than you are and has a dark past. I don't trust him at all, but it's obvious you do. Please just don't let him take advantage of you or your friendship."
Rose came to her feet, gathered her book bag, and gave Lily a cold glare. "Thank you so much for the advice, Lily, but I won't be needing it. Maybe you should mind your own business when it comes to other people's love-lives." With that the youngest Evans stormed away, leaving her sister alone by the lake.
Later that evening Rose was with Severus in the Requirement Room, the first time they had gone to it in a few nights. "Lily just doesn't get it; I'm old enough to take care of myself and she can't stop being the big sister who constantly bosses me around," Rose was saying to Severus as he added a few things to the bone re-growth formula he was attempting to brew. It was highly advanced, but Severus was convinced he could do it, and do it with cheaper ingredients than what was currently used.
"Some people can't give up certain roles," he replied absently.
"So you think she should be bossing me around?" Rose asked, chopping up very fine bits of various roots to add to what he was working on.
"Of course not," Severus answered, not even glancing up. "That's just what she's used to doing. Are you done with those plants yet?"
Rose sighed and handed him the board she had chopped the ingredients on. "Here."
Severus carefully dumped them into the liquid, which had turned a strange, almost milky white. "There." He sighed and put the cauldron off the small burner it had been on. "It just needs to sit for a week. I don't suggest we come back here until then."
"All right." Rose took her wand out of her hair, where she had used it to hold up a bun. She followed him from the room, combing a hand through the dark auburn curls. "I just can't get this mess to do anything. It never used to give me trouble, but lately it's taken to curling and frizzing and just getting in the way. I'm seriously tempted to cut it all off."
Severus glanced at her through the corner of his eye. "I wouldn't. It looks better long."
The young witch raised her eyebrows at him. "Since when've you been an expert on looks?"
"Since when've you been so touchy?" He rolled his eyes. "And if you hair's giving you so much trouble why not just use a spell or something. Don't girls know a lot of those?"
Rose sighed. "Sorry, Severus. I don't know why I'm in such a foul mood."
Severus muttered something that she didn't quite catch about lunar cycles, but quickly said louder, "What're your plans for tomorrow?" It was Saturday, at last.
"Nothing, I've just got one essay to write, but it's for Binns, so it should be a snap." Rose loved history, so it wasn't much of a pain to do anything in that class for her...except when it came to listening to the professor's ghost drone on and on. "Why? Have something in mind?"
The boy shook his head. "I was going to do some studying in the library."
"We can go after breakfast," she offered, smiling a bit.
"All right."
'j'e'd'i'b'l'u'
Sirius Black watched the two dots labeled Rose and Severus move from the Requirement Room down the halls to get to the dungeons and he felt his temper rising. What were two Slytherins doing in a room that Gryffindors had taken for their own? Especially those two.
He couldn't understand what it was Rose Evans saw in slimy, sniveling Severus Snape. They were in the same house together, but so what? Severus Snape was ugly, obsessed with the Dark Arts (wasn't nearly everyone in that house?), and not at all popular. Why was he given all of the girl's attention while he, Sirius Black, wasn't even acknowledged?
And why did he care so much?
He suppressed the urge to growl and instead flopped back into his bed, listening to those around him sleep. Peter was snoring, but otherwise everything was quiet.
Sirius climbed out of bed, quickly, and grabbed James's invisibility cloak from under his friend's bed before hurrying out of the tower and into the corridors of Hogwarts. It didn't take him long to catch up to Evans and Snape, he took a secret passage or two in order to sneak up behind them.
He followed them, trying to catch what they were softly talking about.
"...he will leave you alone from now on, won't he?" Rose was asking.
"I see no reason for him to bother with me. I've never been anything but a disappointment to him anyway." Severus was obviously more alert than she; his eyes were continuously sweeping the corridor in front of them.
"And the Headmaster wouldn't let anything happen to you anyway," Rose concluded, smiling.
"Until I'm of age, yes," he responded. Quite suddenly, though, he stopped walking.
Rose gave him a curious glance before briefly scanning the corridor in front of them. "What is it?"
Severus turned and—Sirius held his breath—looked directly at him. "Do you feel that?" he whispered to Rose, and Sirius only just caught the words.
"What?" She turned and faced the same direction, her eyes taking everything in, never resting on him the way Severus's eyes did. "I don't feel anything."
"There's someone there," Severus responded, reaching for his wand. "I know it."
Rose looked alarmed, but reached out and put a calming hand on Severus's upraised arm. "If there is, they aren't bothering us and we can't see them. Come on, let's just go and leave it be. It could just be a ghost or something."
Severus didn't lower his wand. "Or something. We aren't the only ones who go out of bounds at night, Evans."
"No—" a new voice suddenly hissed from the darkness behind Sirius, and he quickly stepped out of the way, remembering he was invisible. "—but you're the only ones I've caught tonight!" Apollyon Pringle, the caretaker of many years, had caught them. He lit the end of his wand and smirked at the students. "Detention; and you can be certain Professor Bane won't dismiss this incident the way he did before. I'll let him take the points off this time."
Rose and Severus exchanged a pained look, and then followed the caretaker towards Bane's personal quarters.
Sirius sighed, relieved he had taken the cloak, and hurriedly went back to where he belonged.
'j'e'd'i'b'l'u'
"It could've been worse," Rose muttered as she scrubbed out a cauldron with a toothbrush, not allowed to use any magic at all. "We only had fifteen points taken off, because Bane plays favorites." They were serving their detention three nights after they had committed their crime.
Severus was working on dusting a shelf full of vials and bottles. "Why did he have to assign us detention in the potions lab, though?" He was clearly less optimistic than his partner in crime. "It's the filthiest classroom outside of the greenhouses, and they're supposed to be full of dirt."
"If you wanted to teach students a lesson where would you give them detention?" Rose asked, moving to another cauldron. "I think he went easy on us, personally, considering our reason for being out wasn't exactly buyable."
"You're the one who came up with that excuse, Evans, and it was sorely lacking in imagination," he responded, glaring at a cobweb that was just out of his reach. "'Ghost-hunting' was hardly believable."
"I didn't hear you offering any answers," she retorted, looking up from her work to glare at him. "At least I came up with something."
"I didn't feel like demeaning myself with a lie to a professor I very much respect. It would've been better to tell him we were out late studying." Severus suppressed a cough as he swallowed some of the dust in his little speech.
Rose rolled her eyes. "Like you're one to talk about honesty! You break the rules as often as anyone else does, or more, considering you go off into the forest all the time."
Severus paused to glare at her. "And who is the little witch I have to drag with my everywhere, hm? She breaks just as many rules as I do, doesn't she?"
"Maybe." Rose came to her feet and approached him, holding her toothbrush like a wand as she shook it at him menacingly. "But I'm just a follower, you're the criminal mastermind."
He pointed the feather duster at her, raising one cynical eyebrow. "Hardly. You suggest going out of bounds as often as I do. And, as I recall, you're the one that sets the specific times and dates."
"Are you blaming me for this little event?" Rose asked, glowering at him.
"If the wand works, flick it," he responded, folding his arms across his chest in a superior way.
"Now that's the pot calling the cauldron black," she growled out, waving the toothbrush at him again. "You're the one who found that room in the first place!"
"That has no bearing in this argument." He raised one black eyebrow at her. "The point is, we both got caught and—"
"You're the one who made us stop walking," she interrupted. "We would've made it if we hadn't stopped because you felt something." She was actually enjoying their little argument, and was determined to keep it going as it was highly amusing.
Severus continued to glare. "And it's obvious there was someone there. Hence we would've been caught anyway."
Rose threw up her arms in an act of frustration. "Fine."
"Fine." He turned back to his cleaning, facing away from her.
She glared, then began to smirk. Rose carefully aimed the scummy toothbrush she held and let it fly towards the perfect target, and she found her aim was true. The toothbrush hit Severus perfectly on the crown of his head. She choked out a laugh as he whirled around, glaring at her. "Oops. It slipped," she managed to say, suppressing her laughter.
Severus bent down and retrieved the toothbrush then took several quick strides to stand directly in front of her, bending so that they were nose to nose. Rose held her breath, her eyes wide with surprise and alarm. Slowly he held up the toothbrush so that it was between the slight breathing space that separated them. "I believe this is yours."
She smiled, sheepishly, and reached a hand up to take the brush—
It was then that he kissed her.
It wasn't an earth-shattering kiss of passion, like all those silly novels Petunia Evans read.
It was simple, it was sweet, and it was quick.
Rose was startled and didn't have time to respond to the two-second kiss, but she felt herself blushing furiously and found that she was unable to speak when he withdrew and held up the toothbrush again. Mutely she took the cleaning tool, her eyes downcast and confused.
Severus ran a hand through his hair, looking down as well. He wasn't sure what had possessed him to kiss her, but he had done it, and there was no taking that action back. There were two courses he could take, though. He could pretend it had been a prank, to get back at her for throwing the brush, or he could ignore that it had happened at all.
Her response, however, gave him a third option. Rose Evans peeked shyly up at him, smiling, before standing on tip-toe and returning his short kiss with one of her own that was equally chaste and simple. Then she took the toothbrush from his hand, turned back to the cauldrons, and recommenced her cleaning efforts.
The third option was to accept the kiss, to even like it, and to let it be. Severus felt himself blushing and wondered why the reaction was so delayed. Shock, perhaps? Then he turned back to his dusting, wondering what exactly had just happened, and what it would mean in the future.
Aw…. Wasn't that incredibly sweet? Hehe. They've finally got the romance ball rolling and we're all very excited about that, aren't we? Anywho, thank you for reading and I DO hope that you'll review!
Sneak Preview: Chapter 28 is coming, and it holds a fun bit of fluff! Unicorns and Canoodling in the Forest are headed your way! Then comes 29, with Call It A Dare, Call It Jealousy, and one night we all should know from our Hogwarts History by now…want a hint? It involves a certain Werewolf. And Chapter 30 is only Another Year Gone, in which Snape comes into contact for the first time with a Deatheater. It's a filler chapter to get us to the more exciting stuff.
To My Reviewers:
Elvesmagic010: Yes, teaser chapters are cruel, but so are sneak previews. We all have our demented little author's tricks to keep people hooked, don't we? And don't worry, I won't accuse you of plagiarism. This is FF.N, after all! We're all technically toying with things that aren't ours. So, didja like this chapter? Some fluff is finally creeping into my writing…whatever will I do? Bwhahaha!
Rae Roberts: Wow, you certainly made my day by reviewing all three of the last chapters. Thank you! And I'm very grateful for your kind compliments. My goal has been to show that Snape has such a sour personality for a reason. All he's ever been in life is bullied. But at the same time, I wonder if I've over-done it? Possibly. In coming chapters I'm going to see if I can bring myself to make Snape just as unkind to the Marauders as they are to him. Not easy for me.
Rinny Z: Encouragement and an admonishment to 'update soon' works great for me. ;-) Thank you!
Moriann: I know what you mean. I haven't received a SINGLE 'review alert' email from FF.N for ANY review of chapters 24-26. I was discouraged by this, but then checked the reviews myself on the web-site and then I rejoiced! There was much singing and dancing in front of the computer. Thank ye for the reviews, and the kind compliments. Feel free to call me marvelous, amazing, wonderful, awesome, and Her Lovely Ladyship anytime you feel like it. ;-)
Black Sheep Alone: I'm in the process of revising all the chapters to the FP.C story and will be reposting them. I need to fix spelling errors and inconsistencies in the story. THAT is why I'm frustrated. Revenge will come. Severus is not a man who backs out easily. Though I HAVE re-read some of OotP, trying to get a feel for his and Black's relationship. It gave me some INTERESTING ideas.
Nabenabe: Thanks you, thank you for the kind compliments! I really appreciate them. They make me feel most important (and unique)! I think FF.N should have a policy of taking down stories that have been INCOMPLETE for a year. Those are most irritating, especially if they're really good. See you next chapter!
Illume: Snape will go sour eventually, I'm afraid. Even I cannot prevent that. And while Rose may have allowed some light to shine on this poor guy, we must remember he does succumb to darkness many a time in his life. sigh. And I won't be re-writing THAT history.
Emikae: Yup, I got your review! Thank you for posting it, despite the obvious risk. I'm afraid that I enjoy writing stories, and reading books, where there are flashbacks. That's my style. :-) I like to see where the character is (i.e., Rose coming back to Hogwarts to find herself face-to-face with Snape) and then find out HOW they got there (how Rose and Severus met, grew, fell in love, and separated). That's my style. Stick around, it won't be too bad, I promise!
Stonecoldfox: Never heard that epithet used before! Most intriguing. I had actually debated, down to the very chapter where it comes to light, whether or not Severus was the one sending roses to Rose. I decided it would be more shocking if they were from him and so played it that way. Ta-da! But alas, will Rose ever come to know this twisted-truth? We shall see, dagnabbit!
Lysaandi: I wondered where you went. :-) Glad to have you and your oh-so-nice reviews back! Rubix cubes, revenge, maps, love-letters, and Dumbledore are all lovely bits and pieces I enjoyed throwing into my story. Anytime something happens that's odd in my life I throw it into a chapter, however subtly that may be. Hence the Rubix cube…I've been looking all over for one lately, to buy for a friend, and can't find them ANY where. Gerr. So I went to the web-site and found all those cool facts about it, so I added them to my story. Yay for me! While Black may be annoying in this story, he won't be in the story I'm planning to write about him. Hehe.
Thank you all SO VERY MUCH! hugs reviewers!
I'll see y'all next chapter!
-JB-