Author's Note: Well I'm just going to go ahead and apologise to everyone to begin with. This is so late it's shameful and I really do feel terrible for it. So I'm very sorry. I hope it's not also terrible which would just add insult to injury really wouldn't it.
Monthly One Shot Exchange (October - oops)
WrenWinterSong
Rose/Scorpius, Angst/Hurt-Comfort, (emotion) lost
Raise a Witch or Wizard Challenge
Write about two friends trying to repair a broken friendship
Pokémon Trading Card Challenge
Froakie (Bronze - Water) Write about someone blowing bubbles
DADA (Term 6, Assignment 1)
Write about a character who seems to be pushed around or walked over a lot.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise!
Gone Wrong
Saturday mornings were supposed to be peaceful, family affairs with happiness and laughter. Sticky breakfasts with young children and the heralding of a lovely weekend all together. Not this morning. As she stood, with Evie screaming on her hip and James clawing at her legs, Rose considered her resilience. She was certainly tired and certainly stressed, there was food in her hair and snot on her shoulder, but all of this was part of life and Rose had become accustomed to dealing with her children and their tantrums and never resented them for it. They were only children. No, it was her husband, a fully grown adult, sulking at the kitchen table in the corner of the room, that sent her over the edge.
Evie, newly toddling, had toddled right into the wooden doorframe and bumped her head. There was nothing wrong with her, not even a mark, but by the way she was screeching you would think she had lost a limb. Bubbles of spit flew from her open mouth as Rose tried in vain to shush her, bouncing the near 2-year-old on her hip in what was meant to be a soothing manner.
James, now four and a complete nuisance in almost every way, was tugging at her leg as she tried to calm the baby. He was begging her to 'stop the baby' whilst nagging for sweeties all at the top of his voice, trying desperately to be heard over the healthy lungs of his baby sister.
This wasn't an uncommon occurrence by any stretch of the imagination and normally it was easily dealt with but then, he sighed. It wasn't a sigh of sympathy, nor of exhaustion. It did not speak of a long day, or a bad night's sleep. It was the sigh of a man who looks upon the screaming children, and blames the mother for not being able to control them. It was loud, patronising and full of contempt for herself and her children, his children.
She would not be blamed.
Rose, the Weasley fire sparking in her eyes, marched up to the good-for-nothing Malfoy she had deigned to make her husband and plonked the screaming toddler on top of his paper work. She took James firmly by the shoulder and detached him from her legs. "Daddy will make you something to eat, James," she told him, steering him towards his father. "Just ask him."
Scorpius dropped his quill as Evie launched herself at him, wailing intensley, and opened his mouth to protest but Rose had no sympathy. "They're your children too," she hissed at him through clenched teeth. "Maybe if you acted like it for once you wouldn't consider them such a nuisance!"
X
Everything was quiet now. It had been two long hours since the unfortunate incident in the kitchen and Rose was sat, wrapped in a big fluffy dressing gown, brushing out her damp curls as she considered the mess her life had crumbled into.
She didn't know when the poisonous fungi of resentment and contempt had crept into her home and her life but she looked now and saw that it had consumed nearly everything. She and Scorpius had been so deliriously happy at the birth of both their children but something had happened between then and now. She couldn't pinpoint the exact moment, but she realised that she had been more than half the problem, allowing Scorpius to push her around in his grumpy moods and trying to brush everything under rug and pretend it wasn't happening.
She looked at the bedroom behind her in the reflection of the mirror. She hadn't noticed how separate everything was becoming, the room appeared to be divided neatly in two a more than fitting metaphor for the divide growing in her marriage.
Rose sighed and let the brush clatter to the dressing table as a timid knock sounded on the door of their bedroom. She looked up as the door cracked open and Scorpius timidly peeped his head in, brandishing a steaming mug of tea by way of olive branch.
"Where are the children?"
"Your mother came and picked them up after I'd given James and Evie some breakfast. I swear she has some sort of sixth sense, pinned me with a deathly glare as she left," Scorpius answered entering the room and setting the tea down in front of her. Rose smiled softly, her mother was indeed formidable.
A silence fell over the couple as Scorpius retreated to perch on the bed. They watched each other in the reflection of the mirror, but neither knew what to say, where to begin.
"I'm under scrutiny at work!" Scorpius finally blurted out causing Rose to gasp and spin to face him. "I have been for months, they think I don't know but I can see them tailing me and it's all cause of my damned name! I've been trying so hard to keep them at bay at work that I've been coming home and taking it all out on you and the children. I know, I know it's no excuse and when you hissed at me earlier I finally realised that I was treating my children as if they were a burden and you, Merlin Rose. I'm so sorry. I've been an ass and I don't deserve you at all."
He hung his head, shame and despair evident in every line of his body. He looked small, sitting there, like a lost little boy.
"Do you mean to tell me that you've been suffering at work all this time and you didn't think it would be a good idea to tell you wife?" Rose asked quietly, dangerously. Scorpius nodded without looking up. "Scorpius Malfoy, for Merlin's sake what were you thinking? Why on earth did you decide to tackle that alone. Look at what has happened to us, we barely speak, we haven't been together in months, you don't even come near me anymore. I thought, I thought there might be someone else," she whispered, the initial rage dying into something small and fragile.
"No!" Scorpius whipped his head up, eyes wide and horrified. He sprung from the bed and came to kneel in front of Rose clasping her hands in his. "No of course there isn't, how could anyone compare to you Rose?"
"What was I supposed to think? You shut me out Scorp, and I was trying desperately to hold the pieces of this family together by myself. For the children. If you had just told me, we could have figured something out together." She lifted a hand and stroked his cheek gently, "you always told me we were stronger together."
He nodded wordlessly, his eyes brimming with tears. It hadn't occurred to him until today how close he had come to shattering his family in two. He had been stupid and proud and arrogant, trying to take the world on his shoulders when this beautiful, intelligent, strong woman in front of him would probably have sorted the whole problem within a week. He pressed his lips against her hand, kissing them feverishly.
"Let me fix this," he begged as she moved her hand to stroke his hair. "Please, give me a chance to fix this, to fix us. We'll go and pick up the kids and then we'll go out. Spend the whole day together as a proper little family, like we should've been doing all these months. I know it's not enough to fix all the damage I've done, but isn't it a start?"
Rose looked down at him and hesitated, all the walls she had been building were threatening to crumble, but wouldn't that be better? Wouldn't her family benefit from a united front? She opened her mouth, but when words wouldn't come settled for simply nodding.
Scorpius smiled, then grinned, wide and genuine. He scooped her up into his arms and pressed a gentle, aching kiss to her lips. "Thank you."
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Much Love, MaryandMerlin x
