Chapter Four

His face fell. Then his eyes hardened.

"I wasn't asking you to marry me," he said, surprised and annoyed.Then his eyes turned to flint.

"We're too young. I want to finish school, start my career..." Suddenly, Rose caught up to what Scorpius had just said, "What? You weren't proposing?"

"No," he said, his voice like silk, "Try opening the box, Rose."

Rose reached out to the box in his hands and opened it, somewhat reluctantly. There was a ring inside, but it wasn't a wedding band. It was a bronze ring, probably Roman, with a swan engraved onto the bezel. She felt magic from the ring and knew he'd enchanted it. Probably an unbreakable charm, she assured herself.

"Scorpius, I'm so sorry," Rose told him.

"It's alright. I know what you meant, I think," he told her. He paused.

"Scorpius..."

"It's not about my being a Malfoy, is it?" he had to ask.

"No, it's not," Rose said, although she wondered what it would be like -- being Rose Malfoy.

"Your parents?" he queried.

"Well, my father, a little. But that's not the real reason," Rose admitted.

"It's just that you think we're too young?" Scorpius asked. He watched as Rose bit her lip. "Ah, maybe not. Well? What would really stop you from becoming my wife?"

"We are too young, I only just turned sixteen," Rose insisted, "But also, I'm not sure if I'll ever want to change my name. I know it sounds odd to you, but I never thought Mum should have changed her name, either. It was like she lost herself and became someone else."

"You didn't know your mother before she married your father," Scorpius pointed out, "Maybe she was always as she is now."

"She can't have been," Rose told him, "I've heard about and read about Mum as she was before she became Mrs. Ronald Weasley. It's like she was a different person. I asked Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny about it and they couldn't exactly disagree. Uncle Harry said that as long as she was happy that was all he cared about, but I'm not sure if she even is happy."

"She had everything that should make a person happy," Scorpius pointed out, a little annoyed at Hermione Weasley for causing this conversation between him and Rose.

"Exactly!" Rose exclaimed, "Should make her happy. I think that's what she did. She made all of the choices that should make her happy, instead of looking for the choices that actually did."

"Am I the man that should make you happy, rather than the one that actually does?" Scorpius asked, his voice thick with irony and a bit of scorn.

"No," Rose said, "But I want to wait."

Scorpius sighed, "I'll wait with you, never fear, my love."

"Did I make you angry?" Rose asked, hesitantly.

"Not really," Scorpius dismissed it casually.

"Good. I do love you. And I think we should still talk about marriage," Rose informed him, watching his eyebrows wing up again, "We should be prepared and we need to both understand what we each want."

"I want to marry you, whether your name is Rose Weasley, Rose Granger, Rose Malfoy, Rose Poptter, or Rose Longbottom," Scorpius stated, definitively, "Just not today." Rose snickered. It gave her an idea, but she put the idea away for later examination.

"I want to live away from both of our parents," Rose said, "We should find a place outside of both Devon county and Wiltshire county."

"I wholeheartedly agree," Scorpius nodded, "And I want to have children with you." As her breath caught Rose put her cheek to his chest and hoped he didn't feel the burn through his light robes.

"I want," Rose began unsteadily, "to have one child. So we can dote on him."

"Or her," Scorpius reminded his Rose.

"Or her," Rose agreed.

"I like that idea," Scorpius added, "Our child will have plenty of Weasley, Potter, and Lupin cousins to play with if he ever wants company."

"I want your parents to be able to visit us, the same as mine," Rose spoke a bit nervously about this because she'd never actually met his parents.

"If we aren't both disowned," Scorpius chuckled. Rose sighed. In his case, it might be a real possibility. "I want to live somwhere where there are wizards, sorry, love."

"Well, I want to live somewhere that has muggles," Rose said, bristling, "Maybe we could check out Upper Flagley, in Yorkshire. It's a muggle village with a large number of wizarding families."

"Ugh, it's a village. What about Barnsley? At least it has a college," Scorpius made this observation the way some people used the word quaint.

"Lovely," Rose said, "We're finally disagreeing about something."

"Had to happen eventually," Scorpius chimed in, amused, "I just would rather live in a city, like London."

"What about Clapham?" Rose asked, willing to try living in the city, "It's a neighborhood near London and I know at least one wizard that lives there. Or Liverpool in Merseyside, it's a port town."

"That's a possibility," Scorpius shrugged, "And if that doesn't work out we could always move to Paris if our families get really irritating."

"Even if we move to some other country," Rose said quickly, "I want our baby to go to Hogwarts."

"Agreed," Scorpius was emphatic.

Later on, around dawn, Rose lay in her own bed again and held up her hand to examine the new ring. She took out her wand and directed it at the ring.

"Specialis revelio!"

At once the words of the spells cast on the ring in the past formed themselves in the air around her, even assuming the tones and inflections of the caster.

"Repello maledictio! Protego infinitus! Praedico periculum! Salvio hexa! "

Rose smiled. A charm for repelling curses, another to protect her forever, the third to warn her of risk, and the last to reinforce the spells that had come before it. He was quite thorough, her Scorpius, and a bit sneaky. He knew she'd wear the ring because he'd given it to her so he imbued it with enchantments to keep her safe. They were not altogether infallible, these charms. The curse repelling charm was like a thin shield; it would defect childish hexes. The protection charm might hold her back from walking in front of a bus accidentally, but would not save her from a mass murderer. She did not know what form the warning would take but she expected the ring would pinch her, or burn a little; nothing that would truly harm her.

She sank into her bed to sleep, feeling... beloved.

Author's Note: I replaced Iterosonomagus (internet-translated-Latin for repeat word of magic) with Specialis revelio which is used to identify the ingredients of the target potion or the enchantments on a target object. (Copyright JKRowling) The spells used by Scorpius on the ring are my invention, except for the last which is -- of course -- one of JKRowling's. It was used by Hermione while Harry and Ron and she were on the run, it is a protective charm or a charm to strengthen other charms (it was never explicity stated what this spell really did, just that it was a regular part of their protective enchantments).