—CHAPTER TEN—

The ferry began to hum to life. The doorframes rattled. The windows vibrated. The water churned against the side of the vessel, frothing white. Albus leaned over the edge of the boat and took in a sharp, cold breath of air. It pierced his lungs like needles. Scorpius and Rose had settled inside by window seats, the suitcase at their knees. Just forty minutes on a ferry. They only needed to go unnoticed for forty minutes.

Inside, Rose was shuffling the suitcase so it sat between her knees. Her palms were slick with sweat. Romnuk was inside, in a space smaller than a closet. His hammer was in there with him.

Undetectable Extension Charms were very advanced magic but she was certain that Albus' attempt would hold long enough to survive the ferry ride.

That's what she had told Romnuk, at least, back inside the lighthouse.

"You're certain?" he had spat incredulously. "You expect me to get inside that box and have you zip me in there and you have never even done the spell before?"

"You don't get to fucking argue with us!" Rose has spat back, throwing the suitcase to the ground and aiming her wand at Romnuk. "You either get in voluntarily or I put a Full Body-Bind Curse on you!"

They had put the Full Body-Bind Curse on him. None of them were looking forward to opening the suitcase when they arrived at Orkney. Rose desperately wanted to throw the suitcase overboard and let him drown inside of it. There was a reason why Albus had taken charge of it.

They had found Scorpius a hoodie and had pulled it tight around the drawstrings to cover the right side of his face as much as possible. His uneven and scarred jaw could have been passed off as an injury from a car accident if anyone had asked—but of course, no one did.

The plastic Christmas tree near the canteen trembled with the vibrations of the boat. They sat amid holidaying muggles and held their breath. Forty minutes and they'd arrive at Orkney. All they needed to do was sit still and be inconspicuous for forty minutes.

The Wizarding World of Britain was silently smouldering. The action was over. The final failed insurgency of the Kobold Könige had left so much damage in its wake that it was difficult to reimagine the world.

It felt like a curtain had drawn across a stage.

Hermione remembered when she was nine years old her parents took her to see Henry IV Part 1 at The Globe. It had been a special treat. They had managed to get seats—awfully uncomfortable seats, but better than standing her mother said. What on earth possessed them to choose that particular play to take their nine year old to she never could understand. Hermione had been very bright for her age but Henry IV was odious at best.

"Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke," she murmured out loud.

The night that she had given Rose the small beaded hand-bag, she knew she was giving her permission to leave. If what they said was true and there really was a prophecy then the best she could do was make sure they were prepared.

That night, after Rose had taken the handbag, she had noticed a velvet wrapped gift left on her bed. She had unwrapped it and found a silver mirror inside, the kind often attached to hotel vanities. She had thought it strange but put it aside. There had been more pressings things on her mind and whatever cryptic messages Rose was leaving behind could be sorted out later.

It was later now, and as she had tidied up her room Hermione found a note that had been left in the bundle of velvet. In her daughter's handwriting:

If I need you, I'll find you here.

Immediately, Hermione realised that the mirror had been an exchange of sorts. She had given Rose the bag to prepare her to leave and Rose had given her the mirror so they could remain in touch.

"Clever girl," she said to herself.

If the history books had taught her anything, it was during this chapter that countries sowed the seeds of future wars. They had worked so hard to rebuild their world following Voldemort's fall—she had personally worked to build that world—and it had lead to Gladstone and the goblins, all under the veneer of the progress she had helped create.

Stay and breathe awhile.

There was a gentle knock on the door. She was jarred from her ruminations. Since dismantling the tents, Hermione and Ron had moved into one of the unused classrooms in the school. It had been easy enough to convert to living quarters. Desks removed, beds summoned, a chest of drawers and a writing desk. They had left the chalkboard. Hermione quite liked that she could go to sleep staring at her own scribbles, the chalky web of thoughts strung out in such a way that she could doze off thinking.

"Yes?" she said, placing the mirror on the bed and crossing to writing desk.

The door opened. Bill Weasley stood there, dwarfing the small bespectacled goblin beside him. Orlick. As she said his name out loud her lip curled with revulsion, even as her tongue hit the roof of her mouth on the final syllable.

She had asked Bill to collect him for her now that the immediate drama had been dealt with. He had not even tried to run.

"Do you want me to stay?" Bill asked.

"No. Close the door behind you."

Orlick remained unperturbed as he took a seat opposite the writing desk.

Her eyes narrowed. "You betrayed us," she said slowly.

"What makes you think I did not act in our collective interests?"

Her rage reared. She did her best to simmer it.

"You gave Romnuk information so the Kobold Könige could enter Hogwarts."

"Ms Granger, if you do not mind my candour, you have a habit of presuming that you alone know best."

Now she really considered hurting him. Instead she inclined her head to grant him permission to speak and kept her lips in a thin line. If she were to open them even a millimetre, she would scream hexes.

"I did allow them to enter Hogwarts in the hope Romnuk would retrieve the Sword. With it, he would use it to kill his brother. The Goblin Kingdom would be unstable once more. Vulnerable, even. It might be our only opportunity to usurp the usurper. With the two brothers turning on one another we could kill them both."

"Your actions killed hundreds of my people!" Hermione yelled.

"I have lost thousands of my people," he yelled back hoarsely. "Our entire kingdom was enslaved. Did you not want an end to this?"

She stared at him with unblinking fury. Her eyes glistened. "I was an absolute idiot to trust you."

"Perhaps," he acknowledged.

"Get out."

Hermione did have a habit of always thinking she knew best.

She watched him leave. Her head pounded with fury. There was an entire world to be rebuilt now. The world outside was silent. The smoke still hung faintly over the village like a gauzy curtain.

It felt like a curtain across the stage. But this was not the end. Only an intermission.

Teddy was being attacked, ravaged. Small fingers scrabbled at his neck and tugged at the collar of his shirt until he was choking. Children were climbing all over him, giggling uncontrollably, enjoying his torment. There was one sitting on his back that kept pulling his hair, demanding he change the colour of it again. The other had wrapped his little limbs arms around Teddy's torso.

"Alright now," Teddy said loudly, standing up. The two of them clung to him like monkeys. He was out of breath. He had been entertaining them all afternoon.

The older children were sitting with Fleur and Victoire, talking in muted voices. They were trying to locate other relatives who could collect them. Grandparents. An elderly aunt, perhaps. Cousins, maybe. It was a process.

He and Victoire had volunteered for this. Hermione was in the middle of re-establishing the Ministry of Magic, a process that had reduced her to a frazzled mess, chalk under her nails and bags under her eyes. She was recruiting anyone who was eager and of age. Teddy and Victoire did not want any part in this new governance—he was particularly adamant on this after his experiences at the welfare agency and then being a spy at the Ministry. He needed a break from bureaucracy.

Instead, they were volunteering in the Order's Reunion Programme. Their particular task was reuniting orphans with other family members.

The oldest of all the children was one of Rose's Slytherin friends. Teddy recognised her because he never forgot a face. She was lean and sharp with an austere black bob and a face grown hard. She would probably be seventeen like Rose. He had heard Fleur talking about her the night before because she posed a particular problem.

"Her parents were migrants from China," Fleur had said. "She haz no other family in Britain. She iz of age but she haz only ever lived in 'Ogwarts or with her parents. Now she iz all alone."

All alone. The toddlers crawling all over Teddy hadn't comprehended what being all alone really meant. They did not understand that their parents were not coming back. Their parents would be enigmas and imagos stretching over their heads for the rest of their lives.

"Okay, that's enough," Teddy said adamantly, tipping over so the two children unbalanced and slid off him. They giggled up at him, still unfazed.

"Come on, children. Let us leave ze silly pink 'aired boy alone," Fleur said, sweeping over elegantly. Like a snake charmer, both toddlers followed her wide eyed. She picked up the girl, the smaller of the two, and balanced her on one hip. She turned to face her daughter. "I theenk you 'ave enough to go off. Try owling their families first."

Fleur handed Victoire a bundle of parchment and waved her over to Teddy. They joined hands, leaving the room together. Victoire touched his scratched neck and mouthed ouch.

In silence they trekked down the halls of Hogwarts. Teddy couldn't get the babbling voices of children out of his head. They saw a group of Order wizards still trying to fix the flood in the Slytherin dungeons. More of the lake was in the school than outside of it. They detoured to the West Wing and made their way upstairs, towards the Owlery.

"What's the go with Alice Lim?" he asked.

Victoire's mouth pulled to one side. "She's very stoic, isn't she? She keeps saying that she just needs some help to get her parent's finances in order and then she'll be fine. But to have no support network at seventeen is quite scary," she frowned.

Teddy nodded slowly, lost in thought. At seventeen you were a baby. His younger self would have despised that phrase but now he knew it to be true. You may be an adult in the eyes of the law but that status didn't stretch far.

They reached the Owlery. The wind slapped their cheeks until they turned rosy. At lease the smoke was finally shifting with the gale. A storm was coming.

Victoire unfurled her bundles. Inside were letters to the family members each of the children had tearfully recalled. An explanation that their sister, uncle, niece, child was now dead and would you please come and collect the little ones they left behind? It would be terrible news to receive but Victoire feared for the toddlers who could not name their relatives. As she tied Uncle Poppy's letter to a tawny owl she doubted this would be enough to find a man who likely went by a real name.

When she turned back to Teddy, his hair still a pale pink, she noticed the grim look in his eyes.

"This is hard for you, I know," she said, walking over to him and wrapping an arm around his waist. The wind still beat against them. He hadn't replied so she wanted to urge him to head back to the Castle where they could seek some shelter.

Just as she opened her mouth, he said, "Please don't hate me."

Then he stopped, lips pursed and brows furrowed, unwilling to continue. She looked up at him, waiting for further exposition. He was not forthcoming.

What terrible thing could he have done to make her hate him? How could she ever dream she could? Even in the height of his destructiveness—even when he was spiralling into an obsession that placed her and everyone else who loved him on the peripheries—she still hadn't had the heart to hate him.

"Love," Victoire said. She brushed the creases on his forehead. She smoothed them like paper. "What is it?"

He sighed. "I don't think I want to have children."

She was puzzled by this. "But you love children."

He shrugged dismissively and rubbed his pink nose.

"All you ever used to talk about was making beautiful Veela werewolf babies with me," Victoire continued, keeping her tone playful.

"I'm not saying they wouldn't be beautiful—"

"Don't let this war make you cynical," she said, leaning up to hold his face in between her hands. He huffed and squirmed but she held him fast. "Hm? Don't let all this death turn you off life. It's still a beautiful thing, Teddy. Getting to reunite these families is a beautiful thing."

"You wouldn't understand."

"So help me to."

He considered explaining that his father hadn't wanted him; that he had walked out on his mother when she was pregnant. He wanted to explain what it was like to grow up as an orphan—a loved orphan, but parentless because of a squandered sacrifice. He had no blueprint to follow, no model to replicate. He did not know how to be a parent. He did not even know how to parent his own inner child. All he had inherited from his parents was the hapless desire to give everything he had to some great big cause.

Victoire would never understand any of this, even if he knew how to articulate it. She had grown up in the most conventional and loving family unit he had ever seen. It was unremarkable to her and he had envied her more than he cared to admit.

"It's alright," he decided, brushing her off. "It is what it is."

They had been in Australia for less than a day and Ron was already pretty badly sunburnt. His skin was turning an angry pink that clashed brilliantly with his hair. Harry was fairing slightly better because he had headed Hermione's instance that they wear sunblock, which Ron called 'a sorry excuse for a muggle potion.'

"I think the Prime Minister thought I was a bloody beetroot," Run muttered, wiping the sweat from his head. It was cooler in the Ministry, but only just.

It didn't matter whether he thought Ron looked like a beetroot or not. They had gotten what they came for. A signature on the bottom of a piece of parchment agreeing to England's terms for a voluntary repatriation programme. It would be in tomorrow's papers here and despite the fact Ron gave the reporters all the quotes they would no doubt be attributed to Harry by virtue of the scar on his head.

"I bloody hate Australia," Run muttered as they clacked down the marble stairs, heading towards the elevator. He punched the button. "Remind me of when I came here with Hermione to get her parents after the war. She was distraught."

"Yeah," Harry said nodding. He had not accompanied his two closest friends on that journey. Hermione had left less than a week after the Battle of Hogwarts to find her parents and Ron had dutifully volunteered to go with her—insisted, in fact—despite the fact it had only been a couple of days since his brother's funeral.

Harry had been a mess, he remembered. He had sat inside his bedroom in the Gryffindor tower and cried inconsolably, sometimes for days. After Tom Riddle was dead, cremated so there was no longer a trace of him, the relief he had felt was chased away by his grief. Ginny had stayed with him, equally wrecked. Hogwarts was a ruin and Ginny kept saying, how am I supposed to come back next year to finish school? and how can Fred be dead?

"It's weird being back here," Ron said as they stepped into the elevator. "Just like last time. Leaving Hogwarts behind smouldering."

They arrived at the Department of Immigration and Naturalisation and waited patiently before the witch at the administrative desk, a long grey emu quill hovering in the air beside her. She didn't look up at them.

"Take a seat," she said. "The Minister will be out shortly."

They did as they were told. Ron crossed and then uncrossed his long legs.

"Do you reckon the Prime Minister was right?" he asked.

Harry made a sound to indicate that he wasn't sure. The Australian Prime Minister for Magic had stated that many of the refugees would refuse to voluntarily return and would try to stay incognito in Australia, which, "is simply not on," as he had put it bluntly.

"I dunno how I feel about a forced returns," Harry said.

"Yeah, me neither. But I reckon it won't be a problem. Wouldn't you be dying to come back? They weren't treated especially well here."

"Return back to a country that needs to be totally rebuilt?" Harry asked. "Mm. I think quite a few will rather stay here."

They sat in silence thinking about it. They had signed an agreement to begin first with voluntary repatriation and then to manage those who were refusing to participate in the programme or were going underground. Harry dug around in his pocket and withdrew a flask engraved with a snitch. He took a couple of gulps and then passed it to Ron, who sniffed and then sipped it.

The most civilized way to deal with it was for the British Ministry to offer gold for those who were refusing to return home as an incentive to begin again, especially after properties or businesses had been destroyed. Of course, there was currently no real Ministry and no real money to draw from but they had been instructed to play this down. These negotiations needed to go well. It was why Hermione insisted Harry go.

He had the distinct feeling Hermione was trying to get them all out of the way so she could re-structure the Ministry of Magic without their input. He wouldn't fight her on it yet, but eventually he would need to. She felt guilty that things had gone awry on their watch and wanted to fix things better than they were before. He wanted to take her aside and tell her that it wasn't their fault, it wasn't anybody's fault. It was just the way the world was. A ticking time bomb.

Run rubbed his sweaty hands down his trousers and handed back the flask. Harry took another gulp and put it away. He needed something to lather him for the negotiations. The emu quill swished through the air gracefully as it took down notes and Ron's blue eyes followed every flick and twirl.

"I'm worried about them, too, mate," Harry said.

He knew that he was thinking about the kids. All he could think about was the kids. Rose being out there somewhere, doing Godric knows what, trying to enact some revenge plot on the goblins was making him lose his hair in tufts. Harry understood the gnawing worry that they had once put Mrs Weasley through.

"Do you really reckon they'll be alright?" he asked, his voice breaking. "It's madness. We should go after them, shouldn't we?"

"They're a lot smarter than we were at their age," Harry said.

Ron opened his mouth to rebut but the Immigration Minister swept out of her office, her scarlet robes almost blindly bright in the white marble lobby.

"Mr Potter, Mr Weasley. Thanks for waiting."

The emu quill completed its final flourish and stopped.

To keep them busy, the Order sent the older Hogwarts students down into the village to assist with its reconstruction. Now that most of the bodies had been recovered they weren't trying to keep the kids from seeing the extent of the damage. If anything, they needed the extra hands.

Hogsmeade had once been their weekend escape. All the fanciful shops and sweet stores and butterbeer were now gone.

Isabella Nott, Lucy Bird, Angus Finnigan, André Zabini and Toby Fleischer trudged through the shells of old buildings.

"This was Honeydukes," Lucy said sadly, bending down to pick up a charred chocolate frog card. It was impossible to make out the wizard in the illustration, just as it was impossible to recognise the now destroyed shopfront.

Carefully, they raised their wands and set about casting the Mending Charm. Bricks flew back into place. Beams stood upright. The roof lifted off the ground and flew over their heads. Counters and display tables assembled themselves out of the ash. The building was still charred and blackened but at least it resembled its former self. When they were done, even the blackened Honeydukes sign swung above the door.

Zabini was the only one who didn't offer to help. Instead he stood there watching the others work. His expression was dark and sullen, as if he was being forced to help. Lucy Bird was in two minds to tell him to go back up to the Castle if he wasn't being useful—but she thought better of it. Tensions were high and Zabini was the last person they wanted to pick a fight with.

They continued up the path. Toby repaired a lamppost as they past it. Their shoes were darkened by the soot by the time they reached what was left of the Three Broomsticks. A new sadness rested over them. This had been their establishment. It had been their first taste of butterbeer, their first taste of freedom. No one moved to begin repairing it. Instead they stood in a single line as if at a vigil.

"Rosmerta was confirmed dead," Zabini finally said. "I saw the body myself."

They flinched towards him to acknowledge this. Rosmerta seemed to be more a part of the pub than the fixtures of the building. She had seen generations of Hogwarts students filter in and out of their doors. It was hard to imagine that this was how she had gone.

"Is there any point fixing it if she's no longer here?" Angus frowned.

"Of course," Isabella said immediately, as if offended by the suggestion. So they set about their work. The Three Broomsticks was a lot larger than Honeydukes and a second storey needed to be re-constructed. It was complicated. They realised quickly that they were out of their depth and lowered their wands.

Their ears pricked at the sound of crunching gravel and the row of teenagers turned around. Alice Lim was approaching them. Her dark glossy hair swung across her face as she trudged through the remaining debris on the path.

"You'd think they'd have someone more qualified doing this," she said, jerking her thumb towards the buildings.

"We were going to move onto the post office," Lucy said, motioning up ahead. "It'll be a bit easier."

Alice nodded once. "I'll join you in a moment."

They continued across the street while Alice hung back. Zabini stayed with her also, leaning against the recently restored lamppost. A drizzle was setting in, spotting the ash on the ground and prickling their faces. Angus and Isabella cast furtive looks over their shoulders that Alice intercepted. Concern. She turned their backs to them intentionally. If the rain fell any harder the ground would turn to soot.

"They're organising a mass funeral I heard," Zabini said conversationally.

"Yeah."

"Your parents going to be buried here?"

Alice rubbed her nose quickly. "Yeah," she said, trying to sound matter of fact. "They're erecting a monument to all the fallen just outside the village. So I think it's best if they're buried here with the others."

Zabini nodded. Fleetingly, he wished his parents were dead. At least then it could tie up the loose ends. He pushed off the lamppost and began to walk through the shell of the Three Broomsticks, kicking aside the piles of debris to clear a path to what was left of the bar. The rain was falling harder now, in big fat drops that slid off his face. "I've been thinking for a while that I might work in a bar."

"A bar like this one?"

"Well, it's up for grabs, isn't it?" he shrugged. "Rosmerta owned the place. Don't think she had anyone to leave it to. We could probably buy it really cheap."

"We?"

"Yeah, well. Where else do you have to go? This might be perfect, mightn't it? Give us something to do, for Merlin's sake."

"The woman's body isn't even in the ground and you're trying to work out how to own the place."

Zabini wasn't phased by. He drummed his fingers against one of the bar's wooden beams. "Got to think ahead, Lim."

"Oi, Zabini!" Isabella called out, marching towards them. Her hands were crossed tightly across her chest. "Go and make yourself useful!"

Zabini rolled his eyes, as if a great imposition was being placed upon him, then turned back to Alice with a wink that suggested think about it. It was entirely inappropriate behaviour from Isabella's point-of-view, where she stood with her arms askew and her brows furrowed. She waited until he had passed her until she said anything.

"Was he bothering you?"

"Propositioning me," Alice replied. Her smirk did little to hide her eyes; heavy with bags, puffy from tears, sitting haggard and hard in her face like two dark stones. She looked dreadful but tough. The only time she could ever recall Alice crying was in their first or second year after the seventh-year girls had stripped them nude and made them standing in a line of prettiest to ugliest. It had been a long time since Isabella had drawn up that memory, as horrid as it was, and the picture of them all standing shivering and starkers in front of each other made her blush. Alice as skinny and flat chested as a boy.

"Don't worry," Alice sighed, misinterpreting Isabella's flushing. "He wasn't propositioning me like that. He wants us to buy the Three Broomsticks."

Isabella titled her head back to look at the charred skeleton of the building, the thin beams of the stairs like a set of crushed ribs. She reassembled the bar in her mind. The glass behind the shelves, the slick counter top, the bottles glinting in the lantern light and the chink of glasses as they knocked together. Zabini and Alice behind the bar, aprons on, taking orders and delivering drinks. Both would be dutiful attending to the patrons, faces rapt with attention and voices listing off recommendations. It was a pretty picture.

"It's not a bad idea," Isabella said.

She couldn't imagine what the future looked like for her anymore. For years, she had assumed she would work in administration for her father's company for a year or two before being set up with an eligible bachelor of her mother's choosing, date for a little while and then get engaged, where a life of leisure as a housewife and mother would follow soon after. All of that had suddenly vanished. Her parent's money had also vanished. It occurred to her that now, virtually disowned, she was in a very similar position to both Zabini and Alice. Nothing to fall back on and the future a flat horizon all around her.

"Are you worried?" Isabella asked, feeling stupid instantly as the words left her mouth.

"About?"

"Not having any family."

"Are you?" Alice returned, as if it was a game of badminton.

Isabelle prepared her racquet. "Of course. I'm sad, I'm nervous. But sort of excited nervous, you know?"

Alice shook her head. The ball dropped. Isabella served again. "I've always had the future mapped out for me, I never even had to think about it. Now the terrain has changed and I get to decide where to go. It's terrifying but sort of exciting. I feel like I'm itching to run a race and I'm just waiting for someone to yell 'go'," she said.

Alice smiled in an almost painful way. "Yeah," she said. "My parents came to England all on their own. They didn't even speak the language when they arrived. If they could be that brave, surely I could be too."

"Ambition," Isabella acknowledged. "Maybe that's the only thing that could make us brave."

They both turned to watch Zabini, who was still refusing to help. He was sulking behind the others, watching them perform the restoration works. Isabella tilted her head to one side.

"We're not alone though," she said, decisively. "We're our own little family."

Alice reached out and took her hand.

Families were being reunited after being ripped a part by war. Some only needed to cross the country. Others were separated by continents.

Molly didn't know what to expect. She had chosen to stay and her family had decided to leave. It had been a fraught decision but one she was too stubborn to shift on. Her parents submitted to the fact she was an adult (only just) and trembling with the injustice of the world, an unstoppable brew. They had Lucy to still protect and so they went their separate ways.

That Molly had travelled to them seemed strange. She felt like an unbeliever on a pilgrimage, taking a journey empty of meaning. Rowan had stood beside her on the porch, backpack on his shoulders, sandy hair stirring with the breeze like wheat in a paddock. He was stoic. The most emotion he had shown was to briefly squeeze her hand as they knocked on her grandmother's door.

Then she as being embraced, held, cried over. Molly had hardly gotten out the words, "my boyfriend," before everyone had embraced, held and cried over Rowan. Her mother, her father, her grandparents. Their quiet existence in hiding had suddenly come to an end. A whisper that ended in an exclamation point.

Then, there was Lucy. So much taller now. On the precipice of puberty. She had lost the docility that comes with small girls and looked sharper now. The round baby fat of her face had given way to a pointed chin and high cheekbones. Her eyes were sceptical and hard as they examined Molly, then she smiled cautiously. She had lost her last baby tooth. The gap was there.

Molly hugged her tightly. Yes, they would stay for lunch before heading back. Still packing that needed to be done. She didn't let go of Lucy until her little sister muttered you're suffocating me, Molly.

Then they had a thousand questions for Rowan—how long, when, were you fighting together?—and they were dishing salad onto their plates by the time they announced the news.

"It's incredible, Molly, really. We found out a few months ago. But your sister—" here her mother sent a glowing look of pride towards Lucy, who rolled her eyes, "—is a witch!"

Molly swallowed hard around a piece of beetroot. Her throat throbbed. It allowed her to splutter for a moment with an excuse before she said, "is that true, Lucy?"

"We haven't got her a wand yet, we haven't been able to. But isn't it fantastic?"

It was good news. Under normal circumstances, Molly would have been overjoyed. She was not, however, overjoyed.

They had known for months that Lucy was not a Squib, that she was not in any real danger. In fact, since Gladstone's death she had no longer been in danger. And yet they had not returned to fight. They had remained out of the way, like fine china on the very top shelf, out of sight and unlikely to be broken.

"That's great news," Molly said. She sounded false. It was not Lucy she looked at but her parents. Rowan took her hand under the table and squeezed it as if he knew.

She felt like she was sitting around with a table of strangers. It was not the first time she had felt that way. Like she had been adopted, swapped at birth. Too wilful, too rebellious, too loyal to be their daughter. Where was their loyalty? Only to themselves.

It was not the family reunion she had been hoping for. She wasn't sure what she had imagined. They insisted that she didn't get up to help clear the table or wash the plates. So, while the others were preoccupied, she and Rowan slipped out on the porch. And following a quiet conversation, they Disapparated with a crack.

Rose leaned her head against the window. The humming pane hurt, drumming the side of her temple. She shifted to get comfortable again. She took Scorpius' long fingers and squeezed them. He turned and smiled sadly, the scar on the right side of his face partly hidden by the hoodie. She wondered what he was thinking.

(He was thinking that around this time last year, he had been at the Weasley's in a knitted Christmas jumper.)

Forced into silence by his mute condition, Rose was left alone with her thoughts. She wondered if he would have ever been in this mess if it weren't for her. She wondered if he was right when he had said that getting involved in a relationship with her would make his life complicated. All she had seemed to do was complicate his life.

He had come a long way from the stiff, awkward fifteen year old she had silently patrolled the Hogwarts Express with and surely he had changed her too. They had both changed. Back then, Rose had thought of him as an aloof, cold presence while she considered herself to be wild and breezy. He was a glacier and she was a field of sunflowers.

But that didn't ring true anymore. Scorpius had proven to have a purity of heart she never would have expected. Once he had committed to her, he was completely steadfast. Rose had been the dark presence, the dangerous presence, the one to drag them from disaster to disaster.

She linked her fingers through his and closed her eyes.

"I love you," she said quietly.

He squeezed her hand twice as if communicating in their own Morse code. She squeezed the suitcase between her legs.

The door opened with a blast of wind and then shut with a suction cup sound. Albus tousled his dark hair and joined them on the plastic seats.

"Almost at Kirkwall," he said, nodding towards the flat island approaching. "I think we should find the beach and set up camp."

"How long is the walk to Dingieshowe?" Rose asked.

Albus leaned over her and picked up one of the tourist brochures, unfolding it clumsily and then giving it a good shake to straighten it out. He analysed the map for a moment, frowning.

"A fifteen minute car ride, so, like, a three hour walk?" he laughed roughly.

"Shit," Rose muttered. "We could Apparate?"

Scorpius shook his head firmly.

"There'll be buses," Albus said. "We'll just Confund a driver."

They didn't say anything for a little while. Instead, they stared outside the window as the land got closer and closer. They would be arriving soon. Then they would be forced to drag the suitcase off the ferry. To find a bus or a bike or something that could transport them to Dingieshowe beach. They would have to set up camp. They would have to deal with Romnuk.

A part of Rose dreaded to get off the ferry. At least while they were on the ferry they were moving in a clear direction towards a clear goal. All that was required of them was that they sat there quietly. She felt sick at the thought of coming up with the next part of the plan.

What if she was wrong and there were no selkies? Or that there were selkies but they refused to help them? She didn't know a thing about selkies. What if they were dangerous? What if that little black book was filled with out-dated information and she had doomed them all?

Scorpius squeezed her hand once as if he could read the panic on her face. She wondered what he was thinking.

(This plan is sheer lunacy but you always had a way with making mad things work, he wished he could've said.)

Albus grabbed the suitcase. "We're here," he announced, getting to his feet.

Rose stared at it longingly. How much she wished it could end up overboard in the water. It was truly the sum of all her baggage.

The ferry was manoeuvring itself awkwardly beside the wharf with several stops and starts, the way you might greet a relative you're not quite fond of. They seemed to be readying themselves. The last forty minutes had been a brief reprieve, an intermission of sorts.

They knew the hardest part was coming.

A/N: I know this one is short but I was just finding it hard to write and wanted to pump it out and get it over with. I am going to transgress some personal rules and post Chapter 11 immediately after this. Got to get this baby done! Reviews = more motivation to write so keep reviewing! Lots of love x