Over the next few weeks Rose finds that she's healed enough to be allowed out of bed for short periods of time so long as Bilbo is around to watch her and keep her from harming herself further. They've grown rather close, she and the hobbit. He's tended to her wounds, helped her bathe and shuffle to the bathroom, and when the healer allowed it Bilbo even spent excessive amounts of time with Rose in whatever area of his home she's found herself wanting to visit.

He is a very kind soul.

Rose glances over at her hobbit friend to find his shuffling around his lawn, tending to his brightly colored flowers, pulling weeds, and cleaning debris away from the steps without so much as a word of complaint. It all looks very practiced, like he's done it a thousand times or more and finds great comfort in the familiarity of it. Rose finds that she enjoys watching him and has taken to occupying the bench so that she can do so as she drinks her tea.

It is on one such occasion, when the sun is shining brightly above their heads and Rose is sipping tentatively at a sweet flavored tea, that a startled cry from Bilbo rings out across the lawn. A few of the hobbits meandering about pause to cast him annoyed looks before hurrying off down the road or returning to their previous tasks. Rose snorts as she returns her own attention back to Bilbo who is now hold a very familiar wand between his thumb and forefinger.

Breath catching in her throat, Rose stares at the wand for perhaps too long before calling out to Bilbo.

"Bilbo! Bilbo!" She calls, making the hobbit jerk and stare up at him.

"Rose?"

"It's mine, I thought I lost it!" She calls out even as she projects the meaning of her words into her head.

A neat little trick, but one that's far too difficult to be considered practical for daily use. Hopefully with the wand she'll be able to figure out something else, a charm perhaps? A spell? Something to lessen the language barrier between her and Bilbo.

The subtle clearing of a throat makes Rose glance to Bilbo who's holding her wand between his fingers and smiling nervously at her. Rose takes, trembling fingers running reverently over wood that warms to her touch. She remembers the day Ollivander gave her the wand to test; eleven and one half inches of slightly flexible sycamore wood with a dragon heartstring core, it's intricate design had fascinated Rose and even when she hadn't been able to use it she'd sat in her room and held it in her hand just because she could.

Curling her fingers around the wand Rose raises it to Bilbo's vest, pointing it at the little water stain marring the pretty blue silk, and magics the stain away much to Bilbo's shocked delight. She drops her wand in her lap before leaning back against the bench to watch as Bilbo frets over his vest and Rose and his vest again.

Such a silly man, Rose thinks fondly.

He fumbled out some words and a quick peak inside his mind tells her that he's wondering how she did it, what else she can do, and even if she's human. There's no fear, that much Rose can tell, but perhaps a certain amount of hesitation lingers nevertheless. Rose wonders if maybe she shouldn't have revealed herself in such a way when he had no warning. Impulse control wasn't something she mastered at Hogwarts much to her mother's chagrin and her father's amusement.

Several seconds pass before Bilbo sucks in a deep breath and points to the wand, lips moving.

Can you do more?

Rose smiles wickedly before glancing around.

There's a woman making her way down the road toward them. The woman's lips are pulled down in an ugly frown, her chin tipped up, and her body language screaming for a fight of some sort. Rose would have felt bad for anyone else, but not her. Jerking her chin in the direction of the woman so that Bilbo's eyes will find her Rose quickly swishes her wand in the woman's direction and mumbles a spell her uncle George had taught her.

For a moment nothing happens and Bilbo's shoulders sag a bit in disappointment as he turns back to her. Rose nudges him with her foot before pointing back at the woman who is now sporting a hideous monstrosity on her head instead of the somewhat adorable not-quite-a-monstrosity that she's been wearing before.

Seeming to sense the eyes on her, the woman whips her head around to stare at them as she ambles by. Bilbo chokes as he drops his gaze and pretends to mess with his potted flowers. Rose, on the other hand, simply smiles politely at the woman and bows her head. Obviously not having gotten the reaction she was looking for the woman stomps off toward the market.

"Entertained?"

Bilbo nods hesitantly as he lowers himself onto the bench beside her and pulls his smoking pipe out along with a small bag of sweet smelling plant which he quickly stuff in his pipe. Halflings' Leaf or whatever it is Bilbo had called it when Rose had first asked. He'd gone into a lengthy explanation about it but Rose hadn't been able to pick up on everything that he'd said to her about it.

They sit there in relative silence for several minutes. Bilbo will occasionally blow smoke rings and other little thing using the smoke from his pipe but they don't talk much. Sometimes Rose gets the urge to point at something and tell Bilbo what it is in English, he'll do the same - tell her want it is in his language. it's a good way to learn the language... For the most part anyway.

When they finally decide to meander inside Bilbo tucks away his pipe and helps Rose up the steps to the front door. Her wounds have healed rather quickly but they're still tender and Old Hob hasn't even removed the stitches yet. Once she's inside Rose heads for the bedroom that's unofficially become her bedroom. It's unlikely she'll be leaving, or getting back home, for a little while and Bilbo's been nothing but accommodating since she stumbled into his life.

Tucked away in the privacy of her bedroom Rose pulls a small leather satchel out of her bra and tosses it on the bed where she enlarges it to its original size. Her uncle Charlie had given it to her as a gift when she'd graduated from Hogwarts and went on to train as a curse breaker. It's a little battered, scorched in some places, patched in others, but it works well and Rose has never had any problems with it.

Thank Merlin for small miracles, Rose thinks as she flips open her satchel to begin searching through it.

Not everything she'd packed is there, most of it's at the campsite where she'd set up her tent along with the other curse-breakers. But it's better to go into a situation prepared then go into it with nothing but your wand - especially when it's ridiculously easy to get separated from the group. As a result of her thought process and her ability to prepare Rose still has useful tools tucked away in the magically expanded bag.

Her broom is the first thing Rose checks for and she's relieved to find her Thunderbold VII all in one piece without so much as a scratch, next she sorts through all of her medical supplies, after that she searches for spare clothes, and then she locates some odds and ends; a small tent, a water canister that refills on its own, a lantern, a set of dragonhide gloves, and probably way too many books.

There's even a picture of Rose's family, framed and tucked away near the bottom of the bag.

Rose makes sure to put it on the side table next to her bed so that she can look at all their smiling faces waving at her in the morning when she wakes up. It hurts, looking at them and knowing that there's a possibility she won't be able to get home - she's not being pessimistic ok? It's just that as a cruse-breaker she's seen some pretty ugly things and sometimes there's no going back from that.

While she hasn't had her face melted off or anything like that she has been dropped in the middle of a world she has no true understanding of.

Sighing, Rose pulls out the extra clothes so that she can put them in the dresser so they don't get any dirtier or wrinkled then they already are. She even changes into a new outfit so that she can was her old one. At some point she'll have to go somewhere and buy clothes or, Merlin forbid, make some for herself. Rose is talented at a great many things but sewing and knitting isn't one of them.

Unfortunately for Rose, the small assortment of kecks, jumpers, and shirts that managed to make its way into her satchel aren't exactly the style here from what Rose can tell. Luckily for her it might be easier to get away with wearing men's clothes then women's as a lot of the hobbits in Hobbiton don't really venture out and the few outsiders they do see are mostly men, sometimes the occasional woman.

Either way though, Rose is going to have to make an impromptu trip to the nearest human village in order to buy her clothes.

"It could be worse, Rose... It could definitely be worse." Rose mumbles to herself as she makes for the door, satchel clutched in her hand.

Bilbo will likely be getting afternoon tea ready and Rose can take the opportunity to look through some of her books to see if there's anything she can use spell-wise to help with her little language barrier problem.

The house she's staying in isn't small, it's big enough that for the most part Rose can walk upright without having to duck under anything, but it's by no means a large house. It takes only a few moments for Rose to reach the kitchen where she finds Bilbo moving about his kitchen with the same practiced ease Molly Weasley moves around hers.

Ignoring the sharp sting of sadness that attempts to rock her body Rose moves to sit at the kitchen table where she promptly digs through her satchel when she's situated. She ends up pulling out an old charm book her mum bought her for Christmas a few years back; it's thick, with yellowing pages and a cracked spine that's honestly seen better days. It talks about magic and rituals that were eventually deemed obsolete by wizard society during the early eighteen hundreds. Hopefully Rose can find something in there.

As she's flipping through it, looking at little doodled illustrations that show the physical effects of the spells, Bilbo places a truly lovely tea set on the table before going to grab the biscuits and other sweets waiting on the counter.

Rose beats him to it.

With a wave of her wand the tray rises off of the counter - and Rose assumes Bilbo's gasp is a delighted one- before floating across the room to settle on the table with the tea set. Once it's settles Rose reaches out to grab a biscuit and casts Bilbo a smug look, the same smug sort of look she always used to cast Hugo when she did something and got away with it.

Merlin's saggy left testicle, she misses Hugo.

If she scans the pages of her book for anything about world traveling or time traveling or whatever she's managed to do even though she knows there won't be anything then, well, that's her business isn't it?

"Rose?"

She looks up, catches, Bilbo's gaze and pulls a quick thought out of his mind.

He's asking her if she wants her tea the usual way or if she'd rather try the new tea he's purchased. The water's already steaming, still whistling faintly in the kettle, and Bilbo's got two boxes of tea leaves held aloft. She's realized that this is something he genuinely likes doing, spending time with his friends and taking care of them in whatever way they'll allow. And he's so damn excited about this new tea that Rose is quick to push the thought of her wanting to try it into his head.

It ends up being something similar to chai tea.

Once, when Rose was on assignment working with Gringotts' American branch, Rose stayed with a woman named Florence who was absolutely obsessed with chai lattes. She taught Rose how to make them, of course, and she thinks that Bilbo would like them. He's got a bit of a sweet tooth and she hasn't seen him not like something. Actually, now that she's thinking about it Rose is going to have to do something really special for Bilbo, maybe she'll whip out some of her gran's recipes and cook him something nice.

Taking a long, slow sip of her tea Rose decides that once she's got a solution to her language issues she'll make Bilbo something truly amazing.

For the rest of the afternoon the two sit in companionable silence in which Bilbo smokes a bit while he drinks his tea and writes, in what Rose suspects is a diary of some sort, while the young witch continues to flip through her book of charms and transfigurations. By the time dinner rolls around Rose is getting a bit of a headache and Bilbo has manages to dribble ink all over his parchment. He reminds her of Hugo in that way. Hugo's letters always have ink stains on them.

Again, that awful feeling of sadness.

Rose sucks in a breath as she rises from the kitchen chair that's honestly way to comfortable for its own good.

"I'm going to bathe." Rose remarks, pushing the thought into Bilbo's head as gently as she can before turning and walking away.

The sound of stuttering and glass rattling makes Rose wonder if she's accidentally given Bilbo more then just a brief thought. It's likely. She's no master legilimens and while she's really good at getting in, pulling information, and getting out without detection it's a lot more difficult to push a thought into another person's head. Blushing from her collarbones to the roots of her hair Rose decides that she needs to get this little issue worked out by tomorrow evening, or sometime very close to then.

~X~

Salvation comes in the form of an obscure little remark in one of her bloody Hogwarts: A History books. She's reading it for fun, nearly three days after what she likes to call the unintentional mooning of Bilbo Baggins, when she comes across a comment about how one of the professors during the eleventh century used a special charm to translate his native language into something the children attending Hogwarts would understand.

There's more information on the teacher toward the back of the book and Rose flips to the page without question.

Rose skims over his name and his job at Hogwarts with the promise to come back later and read it properly before going on to find the spell he used. Turns out, it's not a spell but a special rune he branded into his own skin, because of course it couldn't be easy. Could it? Rose grits her teeth as she reads and rereads the design of the rune, the intent, and how it was applied.

Hesitation isn't something Rose has in spades. She's a bit too reckless, a bit too wild for hesitation but she's not completely lost the plot either. Branding herself isn't something Rose isn't familiar with as she's got a couple of protective runes magicked into her at some point or another, she's also got a couple of magical tattoos, there's no real fear in regards to it but Rose doesn't understand the process enough to just attempt something that might accidentally render her mute if she screws up.

The pros of branding her neck are these; Rose won't have to worry about understanding people or them understanding her, it's faster then actually learning the language which is lazy as hell but still, and it'll cover foreign languages too.

The cons are these; there isn't a whole lot of information provided, Rose isn't sure how this would affect private conversations, and frankly she's not even sure the spell is going to work.

Tapping her fingers on her thigh Rose decides that the worse that'll happen to her is she'll end up unable to talk. That would be horrible, of course, but Rose figures that it's not the worse thing she could end up doing to herself.

Merlin help me, Rose thinks as she pulls her wand out of her pocket.

Her wand practically vibrates with its excitement as Rose rolls it between her fingers, eyes locked on the brief description of the spell used and the rune needed. Simple enough. She keeps reminding herself of that as she pulls her hair to the side, takes a deep breath, and raises her wand to the part of her neck just behind her ear as that's the best place to hide the rune.

Clear intent is the only way to ensure a spell works as it should, that and a decent understanding of how something's supposed to work. Sucking in a deep breath Rose clears her mind and thinks about what she wants to accomplish with this spell.

I want to be able to speak to others freely, she thinks as she presses her wand into her neck, and I want others to understand me.

To help clear up any possible issues her train of thought might leave open Rose thinks of the little things as well, like being able to hold private conversations and such. Once it's a solid image in her mind Rose begins muttering under her breath.

Fire spreads across her neck, a sharp burn that almost makes Rose rip her wand away, but it's not the worst pain she's ever felt and Rose knows better then to stop a spell halfway through. To distract from the pain Rose latches onto her goals and what she wants to accomplish, muttering under her breath all the while, even as the pain begins to ebb into a dull ache which soon fades to nothing at all.

Pain gone, Rose drops to her knees and pulls her wand away to check her neck - to make sure she's not bleeding or terribly disfigured she's not sure, but there's no melted flesh so that's good she supposes. The only thing Rose can feel that's different is a slightly raised patch of flesh that must be where the rune has been scarred into her neck.

"Bilbo!" Rose calls out to make sure she can still actually form words and not unintelligent grunts or huffs.

She's very, very relieved when she actually hears her own voice echo through the room.

Down the hall she can hear a series of hurried footsteps and curses coming closer, closer, closer. Rose only just manages to push off the floor in time to have Bilbo tap frantically at the door.

"Rose? Is everything alright?" She hears Bilbo call through the heavy oak.

"Everything's fine!" She scrambles to open the door and smile at Bilbo in what she hopes is a reassuring way. "I just figured something out and I think we should probably talk."

It'll be much easier to do now that she's not pushing thoughts into his head and hoping he has enough context to figure out what she means. Actually being able to hold a conversation with someone is something Rose will never take for granted ever again if she can help it.

"I... Why, yes I suppose... You speak the common tongue?" Bilbo rambles, eyes narrowing slightly in his confusion.

Rose nods slowly and says, "I do now. It's one of the reasons we need to talk... Is it alright if we go to the sitting room?"

Bronze curls bounce slightly as Bilbo nods and motions for Rose to follow him down the hall to the sitting room where he takes a seat in a plush chair covered in tan fabric. Rose chooses to take a seat across from him in an equally plush chair that tries to swallow her whole if she doesn't sit on the edge of the cushion. Casting a look at Bilbo Rose decides that there's really no point in beating around the bush.

So she tells him everything.

Tells him about the war, her parents, Hogwarts. Tells him about her education and her family and how once she graduated she went on to become a curse-breaker, which is how she eventually found her way to Bilbo's home.

"We were in Peru taking care of curses at a tomb site when I got separated from the rest of the team. It happens sometimes so I wasn't initially worried but after a while I started to get nervous so I went to head back to the rendezvous site."

"What happened?" Bilbo asks, eyes wide as saucers and full of wonder.

"I ran into a chimera."

"A what?"

"It's, um, a creature with a snake for a tail, a goat's body, and a lion's head. They're a bloody pain in the arse and not even native to Peru, which really caught me off guard and was part of the reason in got it's claws in me."

"But you got away! I mean, you ended up here didn't you?"

Rose shrugs.

"Honestly? I don't remember much aside from blasting it off me and booking it for the nearest exit... After that everything's a blur."

Bilbo leans back in his chair, eyes wide, shoulders slumped. He looks like he doesn't want to believe her but Rose hasn't given him a reason to think she's lying, she did show up at his door completely out of it and bleeding everywhere. Still, Rose gives him a moment to process because there is a lot to think about and Rose isn't going to force him to believe anything she's told him.

Eventually Bilbo clears his throat and catches Rose's eye.

"You're welcome to stay as long as you need, Rose." Bilbo offers a kind smile that makes something in her chest ease.

"What if I never find a way home?"

"Well, I suppose you could always make one here... If you'd like."

"Thank you, Bilbo."

Her companion just smiles. Normally that would make Rose feel like she's imposing, that what's been said to her isn't true, or that she's just bothering people. But she knows Bilbo well enough to know that due to his nature and his upbringing family is rather important to him, to most every hobbit really but especially Bilbo. So if he says she's welcome in his home, that she can even call it her home if she'd like, means more to Rose then it might have had he been anyone else.

Attempting to blink away the moisture in her eyes Rose smiles and tells Bilbo she's going to make dinner before slipping out of the room. He doesn't attempt to stop her but Rose knows that if she needs anything he'd be more then willing to offer it or at least help her in any way he can. Bilbo's a genuinely good person and Rose thanks whatever being brought her to his doorstep that night. If she's going to end up making friends and developing ties with anyone Rose is glad that it's Bilbo who gets that honor and not some snobby tosser who'd kick her out as soon as rob her blind.

Scoffing at the thought Rose pulls out a pan before moving to the pantry to look through Bilbo's food supply.