Of All People

September 1, 1944

Rosemary and Tom arrived at their new, private dormitories with the intent to unpack, but she did nothing of the sort. As soon as she was alone, she tore open her trunk to extract her half-empty bottle of Tanqueray and took a long swig before her shaking fingers lit herself a cigarette. She rubbed her forehead, continually plagued by the headache that had persisted all day in apprehension of that very evening.

She sat on the floor of her dormitory and didn't even bother to look around: her eyes were glued instead to her door, at which Tom would arrive in any given moment. Part of her did desperately want to get her secrets off her chest, but another part wished he never came across the hall to meet her so she wouldn't have to tell him.

Of course, he arrived even sooner than she had expected. She jumped slightly at his knock at the door, considerably frazzled from her nerves. "One moment," she called to him, picking herself off the floor and straightening her skirt.

Her heart sank again when she saw again how happy he was. She almost started to cry, but held her breath instead.

"You haven't unpacked," he commented, looking over her head and into the room.

She shook her head, standing dumbly in the doorway in dread of what she would have to do as soon as she let him inside the room and closed the door.

"Well…it looks like you've unpacked one thing at least." Apparently he had seen her bottle of liquor sitting on the floor next to her trunk. He eyed her with concern. "Are you going to tell me what exactly is bothering you, now?"

"I'm fine," she lied automatically. Her mind screamed at her in the aftermath:

No, you senseless twat! Things are not fine! You cannot put this off any longer. If he finds out from Faye, Adam, Markus, or Rebecca, it will be so much worse…And if he finds out from Warren? Disaster will surely be an understatement.

"I don't believe that for even a moment," he told her. "But have it your way…we can talk later…"

He stepped closer to her and bent his neck to kiss her. The feeling of his lips on hers was every bit as lovely and passionate as it always was, but at the moment she was immune to its pleasantness. Tom pressed himself against her, forcing her to step backward a few times and allow him into her dormitory. He reached for the door behind him and closed it without his lips leaving hers even once.

Oh, how she wished she could enjoy his touch: the way he ran his fingers up and down the sides of her body before slipping them under her blouse; the unbelievably arousing feeling of his erection through his trousers; the delightful, forceful push that sent her lying on her bed on her back.

He climbed on top of her, kissing the side of her neck. "It's been much too long, love."

There was something about the fact that he had called her 'love' that really got to her. Perhaps it was simply that he rarely (if ever) did – even an 'I love you' from him was quite exceptional and to be treasured. Suddenly, her guilt overwhelmed her and she simply couldn't take it any longer.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before saying: "Tom, there is something I absolutely have to tell you."

"Finally." There was a trace of a smirk on his face when she reopened her eyes, though she genuinely doubted that it would be there for long.

Rosemary pushed him off of her and sat up, facing him. "First, you have to promise me that you won't be angry…You have to at least try to understand."

Any evidence of a smirk quickly vanished from his face. "That depends entirely on what it is."

"Tom…"

"Alright…Yes, I'll try."

She nodded and waited for the truth to come spilling from her lips, but nothing happened. They sat there in silence, Tom looking at her rather expectantly.

It was he that broke the silence in the end: "It's your parents again, isn't it?"

"Not really…"

"How do you mean, 'not really'?"

"They aren't really a problem anymore," she told him, looking down at her nails and attempting to sound as nonchalant as possible.

He raised an eyebrow at her and she opened her mouth to explain, but words eluded her once more. "Rosemary," he started in a warning tone, clearly losing patience with her.

"My parents think I'm seeing someone…"

"Who?"

"Well, not you."

"Obviously." He narrowed his eyes at her and scowled in frustration.

"It was the only way I could think of to ensure that they left us alone..."

"Who?" he demanded.

It felt as though there was a clamp around her stomach that grew tighter and tighter the longer she waited to answer this question. She thought she might faint from this internal pressure when she finally said with a defeated sigh: "Warren."

"What?" His eyes instantly narrowed to a glare.

She had desperately hoped that she had been overreacting about the entire situation, but this was clearly not the case; it had been quite a long time since she had seen him this angry.

Rosemary began to explain, her voice flowing from her lips as quickly as it possibly could: "My father tried to trick me into going to lunch with Gil Pollack –remember, from Apparition lessons? –and I was at Comet and Warren was there– he was doing an internship with my father this summer– and the idea just sort of popped in my head and so we went to lunch and I explained everything and then he agreed and I'm really sorry I didn't talk to you beforehand but it all happened very suddenly and I couldn't write you –"

Tom had stood from Rose's bed and began pacing back and forth across the room. "Of course it's him," he started, as though he hadn't listened to a word she had just said. "Of course."

So much for his promise that he would 'try to understand'.

"Of course?" She looked at him in concern.

"I knew that you fancied him all along…"

"Tom!" she couldn't help but give out a small laugh. She stood from the bed and strode over to him, tugging on his arm slightly to lead him back to the bed as his pacing was beginning to make her nervous. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Don't talk down to me." Suddenly he was towering above her, looking at her in a fairly menacing way.

"I'm not," she said quietly. "But it is ridiculous. I don't fancy him. He's just a good friend that I can actually trust."

"Well, I'm sure he feels the same about that." Tom's voice dripped sarcasm.

She sighed and shook her head. "He does. We've been friends for years, Tom…"

"You couldn't have asked anyone else? What about Avery? Lestrange, even? It had to be him, though, didn't it?"

"I did ask Markus first…he said he didn't want to get in the middle of things…" Rosemary told him. "I'm sorry…I understand that you probably didn't want anyone else to know. I didn't either, but there wasn't really a way around it. Honestly, I don't know what you have against Warren."

"He's scum," Tom scowled.

"How so?"

"He just is. I don't like him…nor do I have any reason to trust him."

"You do have a reason: I trust him…isn't that good enough? Don't you trust me?"

Tom stopped pacing and looked at her for a long time before he finally said: "So you're telling me that this was the only decent plan you could come up with?"

She was quickly growing tired of the way he was attacking her; Rose had expected him to be upset, but at least somewhat understanding. Plus, he had essentially answered her question: it was clear that he didn't trust her. Heat suddenly jumped to her face and she found herself snapping at him: "Well, it's not as though you've had any bright ideas!"

"I don't know if this qualifies as a 'bright idea', Rosemary."

His mocking tone stung and exacerbated her anger even further. Acting on only a self-defensive impulse, she shrieked: "You know what?! Just forget it all completely and I'll save myself the trouble!"

"Oh, well I'm so sorry for causing you so much trouble," he sneered.

She was becoming dangerously close to tears and she found herself thinking about how very much she hated dealing with this side of him. His anger could make him so cruel and unsympathetic at times. It dawned on her suddenly that she would never win against this side of him; it was simply too irrational and too disconnected from the parts of him that actually loved her. Realizing this made her feel an empty, cool numbness which she had never experienced before and when she spoke again, her voice was free of any emotion whatsoever: "You were always worth it to me, Tom. The prospect of giving up my family– and everything else I've ever had, really– was nothing when it meant that I could just be yours forever. All you had to do was accept this one thing…and the fact that you won't even try makes it very clear, now, that I'm just not worth it to you."

His jaw was clenched as he started at her and she stared back at him blankly. "Do you genuinely believe that?" he asked her.

She shrugged.

Tom looked at her for just a moment longer before turning around and walking out of her dormitory, shutting the door sharply behind him.

Rosemary collapsed on her bed and buried her face into a pillow. She thought it might be suitable to scream into it, but lacked any motivation that might be required to do so. The numbness held a majority over her for the moment, though she could feel other emotions begin to creep in as she realized what exactly had just occurred.

A sickening feeling of dread was the first to set in – one that was even worse than what she had been experiencing all day leading up to her confession.

It was quite possible that she had Tom were finished. Split. Over.

But how? Things were supposed to work out for them. It was as though her mind couldn't comprehend that they could end up any other way. They loved each other, or so she had thought. Maybe she had been wrong about that all along: maybe Tom truly didn't love her.

Then came the consuming, overwhelming sadness and she promptly burst into a complete mess of tears. One question persisted in her mind, no matter how many times she tried to push it away: what if everything that they had been through was for absolutely nothing?

Tom stormed across the hall and into his own dormitory, steaming in fury and reeling in disbelief.

Warren Cramer. Of all people…Warren Cramer.

It stung so deeply that he had no choice but to acknowledge his jealousy on the matter. Could he truly believe that Rosemary didn't fancy Cramer at all? Wasn't this more than enough evidence to assume that she did?

His fury was not only jealousy-based, of course – there was a good amount of pride in the mix as well. Not only had she informed someone he absolutely loathed about something he absolutely loathed about himself, she expected him to rely on this person. She expected him to just sit back and let Cramer do him a favor…how extraordinarily offensive!

And how dare she accuse him of not caring enough for her and take things this far without so much as mentioning it to him! Granted, Markus wasn't around to facilitate their letters, but surely she could have found some way to contact him if she truly wanted to. Maybe he really should have read her mind when given the chance…

If he had, then surely things wouldn't have escalated the way they did. Or maybe they would – that part didn't matter to him as much as the fact that she had hid it from him for quite some time. How had things gotten so far out of his control? Perhaps this was his own mistake; perhaps he shouldn't have given her so much free rein over everything…perhaps he and he alone should have been in control…

Then again, as much as he loathed admitting it, she had a point: without her plan, her parents would remain a much larger problem until he finally found a way to deal with them.

He was so angry that he wished he could hate her in that moment. Oh, how much easier it would have been to simply let her go! As long as he was with her, things would always be this way: messy. His pride and her impulsiveness would always complicate things.

Tom realized he was pacing again and stopped himself, balling his hands into fists in frustration. He was at a complete loss as to what he should do. Of course, he couldn't just allow things to end between them – that was unthinkable. But seeing her at Cramer's side all year?

Technically, it would only be for the rest of the school year, after all…

Only for the rest of the school year…

He wished that this was something that seemed even remotely bearable, but how could it? Tom could barely see them laughing together without wanting to rip out Cramer's throat.

But what other option did he have? It was impossible for him to be happy about it, but he knew he would just have to live with it and move forward. Being without Rosemary would be unbearable on an entirely different level, no matter how frustrating it could be at times.

His emotions were beginning to get a bit more complicated as time passed...the bare rage he had succumbed to for the last few minutes was ebbing away, replaced with a small trickle of guilt for the way he had provoked her and completely lost it.

A flicker of his memories reminded him: hadn't one of his goals for the summer been to tame his easily ignited temper? If that night wasn't a firm reminder that little to no progress had been made, he didn't know what was.

To make matters worse, those four words kept playing on a loop in his mind:

"Don't you trust me?"

He sat on the edge of his bed and pondered it. While it was true that it was difficult for him to place his fate in the hands of another (given that he was not one to enjoy unpredictability), there was at the very least some part of him that knew for certain she had taken the time to think her plan through. She was very intelligent and quite rational, after all. And they were also dealing with her parents, so he supposed it made sense that she would come up with the best solution.

The fact that it happened to be one that he absolutely loathed was merely an unfortunate coincidence.

He sighed aloud. Perhaps he should have been more understanding. But how many more of these up-and-down emotional disturbances could he take?

And then she remembered the other things she had said to him and how cold her voice was when she did so:

"You were always worth it to me, Tom. The prospect of giving up my family– and everything else I've ever had, really– was nothing when it meant that I could just be yours forever. All you had to do was accept this one thing…"

In the end, this was what shook him the most. No matter which way he looked at it, it was true: if they stayed together, she would essentially sacrifice just about everything in her life. It was something that he did not dwell upon often, primarily because it pained him so greatly to admit.

He couldn't help but feel suddenly very selfish and rather ashamed that he hadn't just accepted her new plan from the beginning. It was really the least he could do. Tom, struck with resolution as he quickly composed himself, walked back across the hall and knocked purposefully on her door. When no response came, he reached for the handle, only to find out that she had locked it.

If that was the way she wanted to play it, fine.

He muttered about ten different counter-charms to get rid of whichever one she had placed on the door, but each was unsuccessful. That familiar feeling of admiration for her swelled inside him: at times, he forgot just how talented she was at performing magic. The doorknob still wouldn't budge, so he supposed he would have to take another approach.

He stood back about two feet, hoping she wasn't standing close to the door on the other side, and moved his wand in a neat circle around the doorknob.

"Expulso!"

With the accompaniment of an unreasonably loud noise, the spell promptly blew out the neat little hole he had traced with his wand in the door and he heard Rosemary let out a yelp of surprise.

Tom briskly let himself into her room. "I'll fix that later," he muttered, gesturing to the piece of the door that was now lying on the floor of her dormitory.

He looked up and saw her curled up in a ball, sitting on her bed. She glared at him and he noticed her eyes were bright red from crying. If he didn't feel awful enough already, he certainly did then. Seeing her cry and knowing he was the one who had caused it was quite possibly one of the worst feelings in the world (and one of the few instances in which he actually dealt with the emotion of guilt).

He crossed the room and sat as near to her as he could dare. She continued to stare coldly at him, her eyes somehow appearing an even darker shade of blue than usual because of the tears.

"I'm not happy about this, Rosemary –" he started calmly.

"Obviously," she interrupted icily with a slight roll of her eyes.

"But you are worth it. Of course you are."

Her face softened and he was further relieved when she didn't pull away as he leaned in to kiss her. Things continued to improve after that: she gently wiped away her tears with the tips of her fingers and finally gave him a small, sad smile.

"I am really sorry…I'm sorry for all those terrible things I said and for coming up with this plan without speaking to you first…" she said.

"It's alright," he told her as he reached up to her face to catch her last, stray tear on his index finger. "But I do have one request…"

"Of course," she breathed, pulling herself closer to him. "Anything."

"No one can know about this…that he is…helping us." The humiliation of Avery, Lestrange, Donohue, Orion, and now Cramer knowing of his blood status was already terrible enough, after all.

She bit her lip and averted her gaze, looking down at her knees. It told him absolutely everything that he needed to know.

"Rosemary…" He could hear the initial stages of his temper in his voice and he took a long breath and swallowed, though his mouth had suddenly gone dry. If she had only told Faye, he supposed he could live with it. "Who did you tell?"

"I wasn't going to tell anyone before talking to you," she began quickly. "But they saw us…"

"What do you mean?"

"They saw Warren kiss me…"

His heart skipped a beat in the most unpleasant sense. Actually, it was more like five beats. "What, exactly, did you just say?" He hoped to Merlin he had simply heard her wrong.

"Only on the cheek, of course…on the train. He thought we had to pretend-"

Well, Tom supposed it could have been a lot worse, but his temper had been worn so thin as it were. "Oh really?" he started hotly. "Yes, I'm sure that's all he was doing…pretending. Especially with your parents nowhere in sight…" He started to climb off her bed in pursuit of the Ravenclaw Tower to demonstrate to Cramer just an inkling of what would happen the next time he tried to kiss Rosemary, but she caught his arm.

"It was just a misunderstanding," she said calmly. "It's not going to happen again."

Although it was still considerably tempting to track down Cramer and deliver to him a non-fatal injury of his choosing, Tom forced himself to sit down beside her once more.

"Anyway, Faye and Adam saw us and told Markus and Rebecca…I had to explain…I'm sorry."

So that was why Avery and Lestrange had been acting so odd during dinner. How dare they hide all of it from him…So much for loyalty. Suddenly, all he could think was:

They'll pay.

Then, as though she could trace his thoughts, she added, "Please don't be upset with them. I made them swear not to tell until I had the chance…"

He took a breath and held it, repeating in his head as many times as it took to calm himself:

You love her. Don't fuck this up. In less than a year, it will all be worth it. You've got to do this for her…

He felt his temper slowly fade away.

That wasn't so bad, really.

This was all he had to do. He just had to make it to the end of the year. Besides, as long as Rosemary's parents weren't around, things would be completely normal between them and he could pretend as though Warren Cramer didn't exist.

"There's one more thing…" Rose started as his stomach dropped in apprehension. "My father spoke to a few of the professors. They're supposed to keep an eye on us to make sure we're not still seeing each other…"

He wordlessly pulled her against his chest so she couldn't see the way he clenched his jaw at her words. If he knew anything at all about the coming year anymore it was this: keeping himself in check would clearly be much easier said than done.

"I grasp reality, but sometimes I like to choke it into submission." – Lisa Kleypas

Apologies for the late update! I wanted to upload last night, but the Doc Manager on the site wasn't working for some reason! :/

Thank you for the lovely reviews: Mrs. TomMarvoloRiddle, AlishaCorral123, A regrettable decision, CharlotteBlackwood, RosiePosie15, three lovely Guests, OtakuPandaHero, and Jehilia! We're almost at 200, which makes me sooo incredibly happy.

We're getting closer and closer to the end of Part I and I have plenty of drama up my sleeve to pack into these last few chapters! I'm so excited to see what you all think. :D

Thank you for reading!