Disclaimer: I am not responsible for creating the world of Harry Potter. I am responsible for a small selection of fanfic, including this story. I'm assuming you're familiar with how this works; you are, after all, browsing ffnet. So, without further ado, welcome to Chapter 3!

Chapter 3: The Two Musketeers

Bad Blood? Weasley, Malfoy Engage in Muggle Fisticuffs ran the below-the-fold headline in the Daily Prophet the next morning. An edition of the Daily Prophet that just happened to have been left at her father's spot at the table, Rose noticed when she came down for breakfast.

Above that was another article that caught Rose's eye, the title of which read We Didn't Get Them All. Rose skimmed the first few lines. The article was reporting rising speculation (and no little panic) that not all of Voldemort's Death Eaters had been caught after the Second Wizarding War. Spotting Uncle Harry's name, she moved to look closer, but was distracted by her father's shambling arrival in the kitchen.

Ron took one look at the bottom headline when he joined her and groaned, stashing the paper somewhere Hugo would be less likely to see it.

"Your mother's angry with me," he informed his daughter dolefully, setting out plates and helping himself to some of the kippers and eggs that had been left on the table.

"Well, er . . ." Rose joined him at the table. They hadn't really talked much the last night. Everyone had seemed to be very much in a snit through dinner, and Rose wasn't surprised when her parents went off somewhere with Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny to have what promised to be a less-than-fun conversation. Rose and Al had, of course, seized the opportunity to fill Roxy in. Which meant, she knew, that it was only a matter of time before all of the Hogwarts-age cousins knew. Oh, well. She had expected that the older crowd – Teddy, Victoire, Dom, and Molly – probably knew already. Well, she knew Teddy knew because of the very kind letter he had sent her after the fiasco at the Shrieking Shack last year. But now Fred, and Lucy, and Louis, and even James would find out soon enough. For all Rose knew, Al might have already told James; but it struck her that he probably had enjoyed having a big secret that his brother knew nothing about.

Rose picked at her eggs.

"Dad – " she began.

"I shouldn't have said that about Crabbe," Ron said seriously, or as seriously as he could have with a mouth full of fish. He put his fork down and sighed. "I don't want you, or Al, or Roxy – any of you – to think that I don't take death seriously. That every death isn't a tragedy, even when it's someone you might not like very much."

"Like Mr. Malfoy?" Rose asked.

"Very much like Mr. Malfoy. He," Here, her father seemed to struggle for words, "I don't know if there's anyone at school, Rosie, who you really can't stand. Who takes every opportunity to insult you and your family. To hurt you and your friends. Who – "

"Yeah, we have someone like that," Rose said quietly. Her father held her gaze for a moment. "Melisenda Wilkes," Rose added.

"I've heard you mention the name a few times. I wonder . . . well, no matter," Ron waved his hand. "I'm sorry you and Al and Roxy had to see that yesterday, Rosie. There's something about Draco . . . Mr. Malfoy . . . he can just get under my skin. Always has been able to. And I shouldn't let him get to me that way. That's not the example I want to set for you."

"It's ok, Dad." Rose felt awkward – her father was apologizing to her for behaving badly? She poked at her food. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around, in most parent-child relationships?

"Rosie?" Ron looked up, suddenly serious.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"Look, I know your mum would tell me not to say what I'm about to say," he said hurriedly, as though he was worried Hermione might bustle in at any moment, "But I just . . . I want you to be careful, ok?"

"Careful?"

Rose's father looked pained. "Careful with who you trust."

"Oh." Rose looked down at the table. After everything they had been through last year, she was really pretty sure that Scorpius Malfoy was her friend. Definitely Al's friend, for sure, she thought. All evidence so far pointed to him being hers as well. Well, all right, he could be a bit of a prat and it irritated her that he was right when she was wrong sometimes. She'd probably still bite his head off when she was stressed, and he'd probably still give as good as he got. But there are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and escaping from certain death by human sacrifice is one of them. She wasn't about to promise her father that she'd stop being friends with him, so if that's what he was asking –

"I'm not saying you can't be friends with him," Ron said quickly. He fiddled with his tea saucer. "Just . . . be careful. Please. For your anxious old dad, yeah?"

Rose nodded. Careful was something she could handle, she told herself. Probably.

"Do you think they caught all of the Death Eaters?" she blurted, suddenly, not quite sure why the other article had just snagged in her mind again.

"What?" her father asked, nonplussed.

"The first article," Rose said, nodding towards the newspaper, "It said . . .," she trailed off. Ron picked up the paper and scanned a few lines. His brows knitted. The paper looked less intimidating in his large, freckled hands.

"Rosie," her father began, and then hesitated, clearing his throat. "Rosie, no one knows better than I do how hard we've looked to find all the Death Eaters. And I think – I really do – that we got most of them. We got the really dangerous ones. We wanted . . . we wanted the world to be a safe place for you."

Rose didn't respond, just looked up at her father.

He cleared his throat again. "I think you're old enough for me to tell you that we're not sure we got them all. We couldn't find any Book . . . we looked, but. . . . it wasn't like there was a list. And I know it keeps me up nights. Your Uncle Harry too. That some of them might still be out there. But, Rosie, you have nothing to worry about, all right? Not from them anymore. I promise, love."

"You caught Mr. Malfoy, though," Rose said softly.

"Actually, Dra – Mr. Malfoy turned himself in. Went witness for us. Had a whole deposition, told us everything he'd ever done or heard or saw. Sly bugger always knew how to avoid getting in trouble." He looked at her curiously. "I would have thought Scorpius might have mentioned that."

Rose looked down at her hands, which were unconsciously running piano scales up and down her legs. "We don't really talk about that stuff," she said.

"Of course," her father replied gently.

"I hope he still wants to be friends," Rose said, not quite meeting her father's eyes. "After . . ."

Ron scoffed. "Well, your mother slapped Draco Malfoy across the face once, and his son still wanted to be friends with you last year."

"Mum did what?"

"Oh yes. In our third year. It was," he sighed happily, "One of the best moments of my life."

"If you are telling our daughter about the time I slapped Draco Malfoy in third year, Ronald, I swear to Merlin –" Hermione had just swept in with, characteristically, a stack of books. She deposited them with a thud on the table almost as punctuation.

Rose had to stuff her knuckles in her mouth, she was giggling so hard. "Too late, Mum!"

"I assure you, sweetheart, he absolutely deserved it."

. . .

And soon, so soon, it was time again to board the Hogwarts Express. Rose, Al, and James stood again at Platform 9 ¾ , having crossed through the barrier before their parents at Ron's very strong insistence ("Remember our second year, Harry?" he'd kept muttering darkly, "I do not trust my daughter to drive a magical car." "And what about my sons?" Uncle Harry had asked. "I trust them even less," Ron had responded, "If anyone is driving the flying car, it's going to be Rosie."). James hopped from one foot to the other and looked askance at his smaller relations.

"Try not to have any massive, rule-breaking adventures in the next five minutes, all right?" he said, "I have to go find Louis. We have a thing. Well, four things and a spider." He ran off into the mist.

"He's been like that ever since Fred told him," Al said mulishly.

"Fred?"

"Yeah, Fred heard the whole thing from Roxy of course, and then he told James and . . . it's like he thinks we did it on purpose!"

"But we didn't," Rose said grimly.

"We almost died!" Al exclaimed, "Of course we didn't do it on purpose."

"D'you think Scorpius is here?" Rose asked, feeling like it might be wise to find a safer subject.

"Bound to be somewhere," said Al. "But maybe we'd better find him on the train," he added, jerking his head back at where his and Rose's parents where shepherding Lily and Hugo onto the platform.

The platform grew steadily more crowded as Hogwarts students and their families thronged to the train to begin a new year. The steam grew thicker, and the noise, until it felt as though the very mist around them was thick with the scraping sound the trunks made as they were carted to the train, as though Rose was being brushed lightly by the wings of hundred farewells and a hundred pleas to, "Write us, dear, we did give you an owl for a reason, after all." Owls hooted in irregular rhythm as doors opened and closed up and down the red, red train, so bright it was easily visible even with the steam. She breathed it in – the noise and the mist and the start of the school year – and felt her mother ruffle her hair.

"You all right, Rosie?" Hermione asked in a quiet voice, and Rose knew that, despite all of the certainty with which her mother assured her that everything would be ok, that she would be safe at Hogwarts, she was still worried.

"I'll be ok, Mum," Rose said, but she suddenly felt a twinge of fear. "You'll . . . you'll keep looking, right? For answers?"

"With every resource I have, Rosie," her mother said fiercely, meeting her daughter's scared gaze. "Rosie, look at me. I promise you, we are doing everything we can. I am doing everything I can." Hermione hugged her daughter close and whispered so that only she could hear, "I wouldn't send you back if I didn't think you would be safe."

"Hermione, do you mind if I borrow Rosie for a minute?" Rose heard her father ask. He pulled her aside, just a little, mostly out of sight from the others.

"Rosie," he began, hands in his pockets, looking very serious, "Do you still have the Deluminator?"

"Of course, Dad."

"Will you," he puffed out a breath, "Listen, it's not that I'm worried, all right? I think you'll be safe. But will you please keep the Deluminator with you? Always?"

"I will. Promise." Her father leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

"Thank you, Rosie," he said. "Now, we'd best get you on the train before it leaves and we have to do something drastic."

Al was on the train already, having had what looked like an equally serious tête-à-tête with his father. Rose caught him coming back towards her when she was almost at the end of the train.

"I've checked every compartment," he said, crinkling his brow, "I can't find Scorpius."

"Well, he must be somewhere," Rose said. "Let's just find something empty and we'll find him later."

But there wasn't anything empty left. Rose and Al wandered until they found some of the other second-year Gryffindors. Connor McLaggen, Dax Destrier, and Bradley Jones had a compartment together with some room to spare, so Rose and Al hoisted their trunks in.

It seemed Connor had gone with his family to watch some of the professional Quidditch training and team tryouts and was eagerly telling Dax and Bradley about it. Rose thought that the retelling might have lasted longer than some actual Quidditch matches. Dax, on the other hand, had done something called "backpacking" with his family, which, as Rose understood it, meant that they carried everything they would need to camp out on their backs and, since Dax was Muggle-born, without magical aid ("Oh," said Al politely, "On purpose?"). None of them wanted to talk about classes for the year – not while it was still technically summer. Rose had heard that second-year Charms was supposed to be particularly challenging, but given the unspoken taboo against school-related topics, decided not to bring it up. The conversation lapsed for a moment.

"Sooo . . ." Dax began, "Where's the third musketeer?"

"The third I'm-sorry-what-now?" Al asked.

"Musketeer? As in, The Three Musketeers? Is this just a Muggle thing again?" Dax asked.

"I've no idea what a 'musketeer' is," said Al.

"Well," said Dax, "Actually neither have I. I think it might be French. But it's a thing people say about people that come in threes. You and Rose and Scorpius – the 'three musketeers.'"

"We haven't seen Scorpius," said Rose, who was feeling a little wrong-footed because she also didn't know what a 'musketeer' was. That didn't happen a lot. "We didn't find him on the platform."

"And then I couldn't find him on the train," said Al, now frowning slightly. "I wonder where he could be. He didn't say anything at the Ministry, did he, Rosie?" Rose shook her head tightly.

"The Ministry," Bradley asked, eyes wide, "You were at the Ministry?"

"It is definitely not as exciting as it sounds," Al said, before launching into the tale of Fred and the chocolate fountain.

. . .

They couldn't find Scorpius on the platform coming off the Hogwarts Express, either. It was madness trying to get off the train, of course. Rose had thought perhaps she had imagined the rush and throng of it last year because it was her first time, but no, it appeared that it was always this way. Students hugged and called to each other about saving seats for friends in the carriages. Owls hooted and cats meowed and toads croaked indignantly, and Rose was glad, not for the first time, that there was a strict rule in her household about not bringing an animal to Hogwarts until you were a fourth year and could "take responsible care of another living creature and recognize if it's actually enchanted and/or an Animagus." Rose had gathered that there had been rather a lot of trauma around an incident where it turned out that her father's childhood pet was an unregistered Animagus who also happened to be the Death Eater responsible for the deaths of Uncle Harry's parents. She was confident this wasn't a common sort of incident, but her father said you could never be too sure.

Even now, James looked somewhat overwhelmed trying to calm his (and by proxy, Al's) new owl, Wolfgang.

"Firs' years this way!" Rose and Al could hear Hagrid call from where he was easily visible over the crowd. He caught sight of them. "All righ', Rose? All righ', Al?" They waved back, both too far away and too small to try yelling over the crowd, and allowed themselves to be pushed with the rest of the crowd out of the station to the background of Hagrid yelling at James and Louis that they had to sit inside of the carriages, not on top. They had never done this part, but knew what was coming – a multitude of stagecoaches arrayed on a mud track. Except, Rose realized, standing stock still, that they weren't horseless as she had expected. Thestrels – like bony, reptilian horses with black, bat-like wings – stood in between the carriage shafts.

"Can you see them too?" she whispered to Al, knowing somehow that he'd be able to hear her despite the swelling noise around them. She felt Al nod mutely at her side. "I guess it was Marduin," she said, willing her voice not to shake. She knew that he had died. She knew that she had seen the light behind his eyes – whatever light it was that made people people and not just bodies – she knew that she had seen it go out. But somehow being able to see the thestrals made it real differently.

"Watched a lot of other people die, then, have you?" Al asked, trying for a joking tone.

"No," Rose said shortly. In front of her, the thestrals snorted and blew in a very solid, real way. She noticed Zeke Smith frantically gesturing to her and Al that he had extra room in his carriage, but there was no way she could handle Zeke right now. She steered Al towards a different carriage.

They rode in silence with Connor, Dax, and a quiet but friendly second-year Hufflepuff Rose didn't know well named Leo ("Short for Leopold," he informed her, "Leopold Spink. Because my parents hate me, I guess."). Well, Rose rode in silence; the boys rode in noise. Rose heard all about how Connor and Leo were both going out for Quidditch this year, how Al's best advice was to eat some Numbing Nougat before tryouts ("See, if you can't feel your stomach, you won't get sick!"), and what broomsticks they all wished they had. She leaned her cheek against the wood of the carriage and looked out what would have been a window if there had been any glass.

She was twelve years old, and she had seen death. Was this the "Chosen One nonsense" Mr. Malfoy had been talking about protecting Scorpius from?

"C'mon, Rosie, if we don't hurry we'll miss the Feast!" Al was saying. They had arrived without her even noticing and were one of the last carriages to unload. Rose blinked and followed him into the castle, still distracted.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Feedback is always welcome - positive or constructive. This isn't the kind of writing I do most often, so it's something I'm still very much working on.

Love always, bbh