Rose couldn't swallow the lump in her throat and she felt a nervous energy in her stomach drop through her very insides. Suddenly all the food she'd eaten didn't hold its appeal anymore. She hadn't seen Scorpius since that day out on the moor. They hadn't spoken and neither of them wrote each other concerning the events that took place that day.
"Rose are you okay?" Alex whispered, to which Rose shook her head. "Well get your Slytherin face on, okay, people are looking so you're going to need to put on a brave front."
Rose obeyed, smiling before sipping some water she hadn't recalled pouring for herself.
The Sorting continued again as quickly as it had stopped and two more Slytherin's saw the girls whooping and cheering their arrival. To Rose it felt forced but she made sure it was damned believable. Later in the common rooms the girls gathered on Daphne's bed to download.
"Okay spill sweet cheeks. The school's going to be buzzing with falsehoods soon, was there progress over the holidays?" Alexandria asked in the softest voice Rose had ever heard from her Slytherin sister. Alexandria Nott was known to be vicious when provoked, second year, Adam Thornquill's balls.
"I couldn't. He didn't either so… it's nothing. My mum debriefed him on everything afterwards and all. I guess there was nothing else to talk about." Rose sighed, cleaning the dirt from under her nails meticulously.
"That's bull crap." Alexandra spat, taking off her shirt and swapping it for a bigger one she usually preferred for bed.
"Shame too, he's bounced back from this hotter than before," sighed Daphne, whom had taken out her copy of Witches Weekly and lay back on the bed to read it. Alex nudged her shoulder in annoyance.
"Girls, I told you both many times via owl that I don't care about that aspect of things. Okay? He can get as hot as he wants to!" Rose snipped.
"Thou doth protest too much," Daphne recited into her magazine cover, the witch on the cover pouting for an unseen camera man.
Rose rolled her eyes and returned to her own bed, which was alongside Daphne's.
"Rosie, don't be like that!" Alexandria followed her, messaging Rose's shoulders roughly.
"Don't call me Rosie, only my family calls me that, you know the rules. AL!" Rose caused Alexandria to jerk. She hated being called Al.
Alexandria sent daggers as she retreated to Daphne's bed, mocking the hiss of a cat on edge. Rose smiled.
She woke up in the hospital slowly, bandages covering her middle. Her mother exhales deeply and her father smiles, gripping onto his wife's shoulder in a gesture of support.
"Why Rose why?" Her father's voice fills her ears.
"Ronald no, let this go!" Her mother's voice echoes until the words fray at their audial edges.
Days melted and she felt the pull of sleeping and waking and falling in and out again and again. Where was Scorpius? Why wouldn't Scorpius see her? She heard sobbing, had she died? No, she was crying. The scar was pink and tore down her front like an ugly reminder.
She saw herself in the mirror. She watched her fingers trace the line of pink down her belly and through her belly button before stopping just below her pant line.
"Why Rose why?" Her father whispered, now he was crying.
It wasn't a nightmare, it was a collection of memories and for that Rose felt safe. She'd felt safe for a long time after, knowing that it was all over with. The cult had been hunted down and locked away, some choosing suicide over the madness of Azkaban. Her own father and Uncle had been a part of the Auror team that hunted them all down. Nothing could make her feel safer.
It wasn't the act of dreaming but the content within these memories that irked her, placing a hand upon her belly subconsciously, she knew if she pulled up her pyjama top she'd find the same scar she'd seen in the dream sitting there.
Pulling back her bed curtains she threw her feet over the bed and got ready for her first day of classes.
Potions first up.
Rose wanted to be an Auror like her father. Though she did take after her mother a lot, especially in the book smarts department, she had a side of her that sought out something more. Hugo liked to say it was the Slytherin part of her but she figured it was part of her father in her, trying to prove herself against the studious grain.
To become an Auror these days you needed to take Advance Potions, which was a small class and more difficult to complete with the required marks. Rose felt as if she were up to the challenge. This year would be different, she would be free from harrowing distractions and be the best she could be. Her new hair cut gave her new found confidence which felt silly, she admitted to herself, but it worked. She would tackle this year head on.
She strode on into to the potions dungeon and found the backs of only five other students awaiting her.
"Ah Miss Rose, you are just on time." Her teacher announced loud enough for her peers to snap their attentions back to her.
Shit, there goes tackling this year head on.
Amity, Hyacinth, Lycan, Jonathan Vayne and Scorpius… great.