The very last chapter in this story. Can you believe how fast I finished it?

Epilogue: Remembering Rose

"God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December."
–James Matthew Barrie

"What was grandmum like?" The question comes unexpectedly from his three-year-old granddaughter Jasmine, as she joins him on the couch to get away from the hustle and bustle of the family reunion.

He pretends he didn't hear her question. Looking through the doorway, Scorpius catches a glimpse of his son Leo, decorating the living room with streamers trailing from his wand.

"Granddaddy, are you listening to me?" Jasmine repeats ferociously, her hands on her hips the same way Rose would.

And then he gives in. She is too much like her grandmother, from her frizzy red hair to her stubborn personality.

"Your grandmother was an amazing person," he starts. "She had faith in everyone, including me."

"Huh?" Her little hands play with her hair, and her innocent face is fixed on him.

He puts his arm around her. "Let's just say… a long time ago, there was a war, and my parents were on the bad side."

She seems satisfied with this answer, so he continues. "She loved you very much, you know."

"She liked to hold me," Jasmine remembers.

Scorpius knows that she is much too young to have remembered that, but he doesn't correct her. How often has he done the same thing? Assuaging the pain with memories somewhere between dreams and reality.

Slowly, his joints aching in protest, he reaches for a photo album on the coffee table. It is made of dark brown leather, embossed with "Rose" in gold calligraphy.

She made it herself, he remembers. She bought the album and gold leaf from a craft shop, refusing to use her wand in any part of the process.

"I want to treasure this," she had said solemnly, "I don't want it to be easy, to be instantly replaceable."

And so he and Jasmine now stroll through a garden of memories.

"Her first day of school," Scorpius says of a portrait featuring a young girl in black robes. Just by looking at it, he is flooded with all the details of the day he met her.

There are pictures of winters past: snowball fights and stories told by the fireplace in the Burrow.

There are frozen moments of summer: ice-cold lemonade and a Quidditch World Cup.

There are snapshots of long gone days at Hogwarts: splashing in the lake and his head in her lap beneath the shade of a tree.

Their graduation comes and goes, depicted by photos of boats coming across the lake and fancy dress robes.

Rose is growing up.

She attends birthday parties and weddings and graduations and baby showers and funerals. All are captured by the silent eye of the camera and pasted lovingly into the album.

Jasmine particularly loves the pictures of Rose in her wedding dress, taken after the ceremony, but before the reception.

It had been a lazy summer day, he remembers.

The photographer, Dennis Creevey, he thinks, had come with them, snapping picture after picture as they Apparated around the countryside.

The first one was on the beach near Shell Cottage. He stands behind her, his arms around her waist, her poufy white dress almost touching the wet sand. The salty breeze is blowing her hair and veil back as she laughs at something he has whispered in her ear.

Then they're in a forest somewhere. He has managed to pin her with her back to a tree and is kissing her. She doesn't seem to mind.

They come to a dock. This one he remembers clearly, because Rose had laughed and thanked the photographer for taking a picture where they didn't look like perfect china dolls. He is carrying her, and she is smacking him with one arm, the other around his neck. She had been trying to get him to put her down, but he had only threatened to throw her into the water.

They sit on a weathered stone bench, backs to the camera, holding hands. Her head rests on his shoulder and the setting sun gives them angelic halos.

The next page is a picture of their flat. The first home besides Hogwarts that they shared together. Rose is sitting amidst a mess of brown boxes, frowning at him when he took her picture.

Rose is propped up in a St. Mungo's hospital bed (she always argues that she had been sitting). In her arms is a chubby boy with blonde Malfoy hair. The baby is wrapped in a green blanket, because Rose always said she hated how boys wore blue and girls wore pink.

Then Hannah is born, and two-year-old Leo is trying to peek into the bundle of blankets his mother is holding.

Years pass.

Leo and Hannah grow up.

And Violet comes. She is a surprise, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless. He remembers asking in shock, "But I thought we used the potion?" She had just laughed. "But I'm a Weasley."

Their three children grow up, go to school, graduate.

Rose is getting older.

Her face lights up as she holds Leo's little blond Malfoy son, and she smiles brightly when her daughter Violet hands her Jasmine.

The last picture in the album is of her and Scorpius, on their fiftieth anniversary. They are standing beneath the Eiffel tower, a jumble of metal framing their aging, stooped figures.

Jasmine is in awe.

Heck, Scorpius is in awe.

And he finally understands why this album was so important to Rose.

So everyone would remember what grandmum was like.

Lots of love to my reviewers: annabeth22, SuperTacocat, PJATOSROCKS09, India'TeamStarkid'J, FatallyUnique, listen2music4ever, AlyksDaughterofArtemis, lovetoread1998, and Sam Storsky.

Thanks to the rest of my readers who have stuck with me this far, even though they didn't review. (You know who you are. No one can hide from the story traffic stats. ;))

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