Chapter Three-Ron, Take 1
In Rose's opinion, the drive home from King's Cross that year was the shortest it had ever been before. She looked up at her house with some trepidation as Hermione parked the car in the driveway and turned it off. Rose turned to her mother with a pleading expression on her face.
"Mum, can you please, please, please use one of your Ministry connections to get me a Time Turner that will take me to September 1st right now?" Rose asked.
The expression upon Hermione's face clearly told her daughter that the answer to that was question was a firm 'no' but that didn't stop Rose from pleading her case further.
"Please, mum?" Rose continued, "Don't you love me? You know dad will probably kill me once I tell him; don't you want to grant me my dying wish—a dying wish, I might add, that will most definitely prolong my life, at least a little bit?"
"Rosie-Rose," Hermione quickly amended when the pleading expression on her daughter's face turned into a frown. "You know your dad loves you; he might overreact a little bit at first when he finds out, but that's perfectly normal, dear. After all, Scorpius is his only daughter's first boyfriend. Unless…" She gave her daughter a shrewd look, "There aren't any other boys that you've hidden from us, are there?"
"Mu-um," Rose groaned, "Let's focus on the issue at hand here, shall we?"
"So you have?" Hermione questioned, taking Rose's avoidance of the subject as an affirmative response to her question.
"No!" Rose said quickly. Then she sighed. "Mum, there's more than reason why Scorpius and I kept everything under wraps; one of them being that, no matter how often Lily's told me I need to 'get myself a man', my dear, sweet, wonderful cousins are quite the pros at scaring boys away before we've even exchanged two words."
"I'm sure your father would be quite happy to know that," Hermione said, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening her car door. "Perhaps you should mention that somewhere in your announcement; it might ease his pain a bit."
"Oh sure," Rose muttered under her breath as she got out of the car as well, "You're worried about the pain he's going to be going through, while I'm the one who's probably going to get axe-murdered by an Auror."
"You know," Hermione said thoughtfully as she gave a discreet glance around them to make sure none of their muggle neighbors were about before banishing all of Rose and Hugo's things into their respective bedrooms. "I'd love to hear what you and Neville discussed during your career counseling last year. I'm sure there would be some interesting career paths open to you with that over-active imagination of yours."
Rose didn't even bother to respond as she followed her mother up the front path with a glum expression on her face. She was slightly mollified however, when she stepped into the house and discovered that her father still had yet to return home from work.
"I think I'll go write out my will before dad gets here," Rose said thoughtfully, taking the stairs up to her room two at a time.
"Do me a favor and find some time to unpack, too!" Hermione called up the stairs after her daughter. "I'm already counting on having to clean up after your brother, and I don't want to have sorting through all of your school things interrupt my mourning after you die!"
When Rose got up to her room she flicked her wand at her luggage and it unpacked itself and sorted everything into its appropriate place. Approximately two minutes and thirty-six seconds later she decided it probably would have been a better idea to do it all by hand because then she could have at least pretended she was occupying her mind with more than thoughts of her impending doom. Deciding to take a (hopefully not foolishly) optimistic approach, Rose decided to forego writing her will for the time being and instead proceeded to begin pacing her room. After all, it would probably be best to have some sort of game plan for informing her father that she was currently dating his mortal enemy.
Forty one minutes and twenty-three seconds later Rose was no closer to figuring out a way to tell her father the news that she believed was sure to give him a heart attack. And, as her luck would have it, just at that moment she heard the front door open and then close with a click.
"I'm home!" She heard her father's voice call out from the entryway. "Hermione? Rose? Hugo?"
Rose could just make out the sound of her mother's footsteps, probably coming from the kitchen, going to greet her father. There was a slight murmur of voices, then,
"Rose!" Hermione called now. "Come down for dinner!"
Rose closed her eyes and took a few calming breaths before marching determinedly towards her door. With one hand on the doorknob, she looked back at her room with a fond expression.
"Well, it's been nice knowing you…" She said to no one in particular, before opening the door and making her way downstairs.
Once back on the first floor, Rose slowly walked into the kitchen, where her mother was finishing placing all of the food on the table. She gave Hermione a questioning look.
"He's just putting his things in his study," Hermione informed her daughter. "Don't forget to breathe."
Rose could not respond, however, because just at that moment her father entered the room.
"Rosie!" Ron said happily, crossing the room in a few steps and enveloping his daughter in a hug.
"Hi dad," Rose squeaked out, hanging onto her dad for dear life. Ron was therefore the first to pull away, redirecting his attention to the food-laden table.
"Everything looks great, 'Mione," He said, sitting down.
"It's about time you appreciated my cooking," Hermione chastised her husband, as she and Rose sat down as well.
"Ron," Hermione spoke again, opting to get Rose's news out of the way as soon as possible and giving her daughter a reassuring smile that Ron's ever-sharp Auror eyes did not miss. "Rose has something she'd like to tell you."
Ron turned to his only daughter expectantly and Rose took one more calming breath before meeting her father's gaze.
"Dad," She said slowly, "I-I wanted to tell you that…I have a…a boyfriend."
Ron's eyes widened in shock, and Rose thought she could detect a red tint making its way up his neck.
"What's his name?" Ron asked, practically spitting the question out in an attempt to stay calm; after all, Hermione had long ago warned him that this day would come one day when he least expected it.
"It's…dad, I'm dating Scorpius Malfoy," Rose said quickly, preparing herself for what she was sure was going to be an onslaught of yelling.
She was to be disappointed, however. Ron, for some unexplainable reason, seemed to relax at this news.
"Where did you say Hugo was?" Ron asked, suddenly turning to his wife.
"Harry and Ginny's," Hermione replied promptly, though she looked more than a bit confused at her husband's unexpected reaction to their daughter's announcement.
Ron nodded thoughtfully to himself as if this answer explained everything which, apparently, it did.
"Makes sense," He said with a shrug, "Hugo was never very good at keeping secrets."
"Erm…what?" Rose asked, incapable of further comprehensive speech. She hadn't mentioned anything about keeping their relationship a secret yet, not that Hugo had even known…
"Hugo," Ron began, pulling the pasta towards him, "Would have given everything away before you'd even finished speaking, Rosie. He'd have been laughing before I could have even worked myself up over anything." He smiled kindly at his daughter now. "It was a pretty good joke, though. Uncle George would be proud; we'll have to tell him about it the next time we see him. No doubt he'll come up with a way to market it."
"Dad…" Rose said, eyes wide, "It wasn't a joke; I really am dating Scorpius Malfoy."
Ron spit out the sip of water he had just taken. He looked back and forth between his wife and daughter frantically, silently begging one of them to shout 'April Fool!', never mind the fact that it was already June.
"What?" Ron demanded softly when no one else made a move to speak or otherwise retract the earlier statements.
"Scorpius Malfoy is my boyfriend, daddy," Rose said, practically whispering now as the tips of Ron's ears slowly turned bright red.
"Rose Weasley!" Ron exploded. "How could you do this? I told you your first day at Hogwarts to stay away from that boy!"
"He has a name!" Rose shouted back, suddenly angry with her father. "And you've never had a problem with him before, when he was just Al's friend! I can't believe you, dad! You're the one who always told Hugo and me not to judge people based on preconceived notions!"
"Well maybe I'm taking it all back!" Ron shot back. "I forbid you to see that boy ever again! And I'm going to have a chat with Harry about how Albus chooses his friends."
"Ron," Hermione said in low voice, frowning at her husband. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Ridiculous?" Ron repeated, still at a rather loud decibel. "I'm not being ridiculous! I'm being reasonable. The Malfoys have always been dark wizards, so why would you want our daughter fraternizing with the likes of them?"
"Scorpius' family was cleared of all charged," Rose said stonily. "You were there; you know all of this. You testified at the trial!"
"Plenty of death eaters were cleared by Fudge after the first war," Ron said dismissively, his face still red. "Doesn't mean it's true."
"Fudge cleared Uncle Harry after he was accused of using underage magic and expelled from Hogwarts!" Rose couldn't help but shout, standing up as she did so. "I can't take any of this anymore! I'm going to go find out what happened to that annoying brother of mine and when I get back you had better not be going on about all of this utterly stupid nonsense anymore!"
And without another word, Rose turned around and marched to the back door, leaving her father sputtering wordlessly in her wake while her mother sat there with a proud smile on her face. Closing the door behind her, Rose practically ran across the backyard until she reached the only spot in the backyard outside of the wards, before turning on her heel and disappearing with a slight pop!