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“We just have to see what she thinks she knows,”
“I don’t think this is going to be good,”
Harry and Ginny were sitting in their dining room arguing about what to do with Rose’s new found knowledge about their school years. Ginny decided she would talk to Rose. Ron had a lot on his plate right now.
“Aunt Ginny?!” they heard Rose’s voice in the other room.
“We’re in here sweetie,” Ginny called back.
Rose appeared at the door and Harry took that as his cue to leave. “Well ladies, you have a nice talk. I have to get to the office, we have another meeting with that prick Malfoy today. I know he’s up to something, but I can’t pin anything on him,”
The name flipped a switch in Rose’s brain, “Malfoy!” she had completely forgotten about her encounter with a Malfoy the same day Hugo had shown up at her door.
“What about him?” Harry asked.
“Scorpius, he came to see me at school. He said something about a job opportunity. He wanted me to work for him. Oh my God! He said I would be sorry for turning him down. Do you think he had something to do with my mom?!” she looked concerned that she hadn’t thought to tell Harry about that earlier.
“We don’t have any leads that way, but I’ll look into it. Thanks Rose,” Harry hurried out of the room.
Rose turned back and looked at her aunt. “Lily said you wanted to talk to me,”
Ginny nodded, “Why don’t you sit down,” Rose took the seat right across from Ginny. “The other day, at the hospital, why the interest in the war all of a sudden?”
“Oh, that,” she didn’t know why she didn’t let anyone know about what she was doing. Trying to know her mother better was a good thing. Regardless, she felt it wasn’t a very good idea to tell anyone just yet. “Um, I was reading a book and got confused. I thought the book was supposed to be non-fiction, I was wrong. Misunderstanding, that’s all.” She gave Ginny a big smile.
“Oh,” Ginny didn’t think it was going to be that easy. Ron was right, questions were Rose’s favorite form of sentence, and she usually kept asking them until she got all the answers she wanted. Not to mention she was too stubborn to ever admit she was wrong. “Because I wanted to let you know that digging around in that stuff probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.”
“Yeah I figured,” however, she actually wondered why Ginny thought it wouldn’t be a good idea, “Don’t worry about it Aunt Ginny, it’s already forgotten,”
“Good, ok, well I’m headed to the hospital,” she stood up “Are you going?”
“Yeah,” Rose thought about Kenny, “I have to go take care of something at home first. I’ll meet you there.”
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When Rose got back to her house, she heard Kenny and Lily talking in the kitchen. Kenny seemed to be asking questions and Lily was either answering them with explanations or just simply showing him.
Rose entered the kitchen to find Kenny sitting with an amazed look on his face while Lily turned all the china in the room into animals. She was turning a dinner plate into a turtle when she noticed Rose. “Hey, what did my mom want to talk to you about?”
“Oh nothing, what are you doing?”
“Just showing Kenny some of my mad Transfiguration skills,”
“She turned that plate into a turtle!” Kenny added with excitement.
“Mad Transfiguration skills huh?” Rose looked at the turtle on the table, “When’d you learn that, second year?” She took out her own wand and waved it at Lily. Instantly, her ears started to grow and get pointy and her hair began to shorten. Soon she was standing there with the head of a fox with fur as red as her hair. “Now, that’s mad Transfiguration skills,” Rose said with triumph.
“Oh my God!” Kenny cried, “That was awesome!”
“C’mon Rose!” Lily’s voice coming out of the fox’s head made Rose start to laugh harder than she had in days, “Why do you always have to show everyone up like that? Put me back,”
“I think it works for you Lil,” Rose managed through snickers. Kenny had joined her in her amusement and was now almost falling out of his seat.
“I’m serious!” it was hard to take Lily seriously, “Rose Ginerva
Weasely I will curse you right here!”
“Fine, fine, calm down, you don’t have to middle name me,” Rose waved her wand again and Lily was back to normal.
Lily was clearly disgruntled by Rose’s spell. Her face blushed so bright, it threatened to match her hair. “He was totally impressed by what I was doing, you know,” she sat down at the table with her arms crossed across her chest.
“I’m sorry Lily. I just couldn’t resist. Will you ever forgive me?” Rose jutted out her bottom lip into a very insincere sad face.
“Alright, I’m better at Quidditch anyway, and that’s what’s really important,” she gave a mocking smile.
“That’s debatable, but we won’t get into that now. I want to show you something,” Rose went to the counter where she had placed her mother’s folder earlier. She brought it over and handed it to Lily.
On her way back from the Potter’s, Rose had decided that this was going to a lot harder than she originally thought. Despite her reluctance to tell Ginny, she thought that it might be a smart to find someone to help her. Judging by Ginny’s lack of desire to see the matter pursued, she figured none of the adults would be much help. (Well technically she guessed her and Lily were adults, she was almost 22 and Lily had just turned 20, but she, along with everyone else, still thought of her parents and aunts and uncles as ‘the adults’ and her and her cousins as ‘the kids.’) Lily was her best friend, her favorite cousin. They had been through a lot together and she realized that Lily would probably be all over finding this stuff out.
Lily scanned the contents of the folder and looked up at Rose. “Where did you get this?”
“My mom’s office,” Rose sat down across from Lily, “I think there’s a lot more in their pasts than they’re letting on. I think they’ve been lying to us,” Ok this might have been in exaggeration. Dumbledore had told her that they just weren’t telling them everything, that’s not exactly lying.
“So?”
“Don’t you want to know what they really did?” Rose leaned in towards her cousin, “They fought in the most important war of the 20th century and there’s stuff they are deliberately keeping from us. Don’t you want to know why?”
Lily didn’t look very convinced. Rose grabbed the folder out of her hands and rummaged though it. “Look,” she pulled out Hermione’s Hogwarts letter as well as the paper with all her math from before, “Your mom and my mom supposedly graduated from Hogwarts the same year right?”
“Yeah,” Lily replied, “My mom has a picture of the two of them on the mantle,”
“Ok,” Rose continued, “My mom made the Head Girl speech. I know, because when I graduated Headmaster Martin made such a big deal about it being exactly 25 years since my mother made her speech,”
“Yeah I remember, you didn’t want to make it,”
“Right. Ok, now look at the letter,”
Lily looked at the old piece of parchment Rose had thrust in her hands, “It’s your mom’s first Hogwarts letter, so?”
“Look at the date,”
“15 July 1991, again I ask, so?”
“Lily! Seven years past 1991 is 1998, twenty five years before 2024 is 1999!”
“Wait, what?” Lily was starting to realize where Rose was going.
“It doesn’t add up. If she started school in 1991 and graduated in 1999, she would have spent eight years at Hogwarts,”
“People do it. It’s not unheard of,”
“Yeah, people do it. Stupid people do it, people who fail! She didn’t fail!”
“How do you know?”
Rose just glared at Lily.
“Ok you’re right, I’d have a pretty hard time believing Aunt Hermione failed something. So what happened?”
“I don’t know!” Rose through her hands up in frustration, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I read this book that said that the whole war thing was a lot more complicated than we thought…”
Lily put her hand up to stop her, “Ok I understand that this is shifty. But my question is why do you care? I mean, it doesn’t involve us,”
“Someone told me once,” she didn’t think Lily would believe the Dumbledore part until she took her to the Ministry herself, “that in order to be close to someone, it helps to understand what it’s like to live their life, to understand things they went through. I thought maybe if I knew more about her…”
“Oh,” Lily looked down at her lap. She knew Rose’s relationship with Hermione wasn’t great. She knew that both of them hated the way they always fought, but couldn’t figure out how to stop it. It was just then that Lily gave a thought to how Rose must be feeling. Her mom was unconscious in the hospital with honestly little hope of recovery, and the last conversation she had had with her was a rather intense argument. Lily remembered; she was there. It wasn’t like Rose to pursue things without thinking them all the way through, her brothers definitely, her cousin Fred, probably, but certainly not Rose. This must mean a lot to her. “Ok, Rosie,” she placed her hand on top of her cousin’s, “I’ll help you,”
Rose looked up and smiled at Lily. She knew Lily would have her back, even if it did sound crazy, which she was fully aware that it did.
“I’ll help too,” Kenny chimed in again, feeling a little left out.
“Ok, but I think you have other things to worry about,” Rose responded with a smile.
“What?”
“We have to go to the hospital,”
Lily turned to him with the same devious smile Rose had one and wiggled her eyebrows at him. “C’mon loverboy, let’s go,” she stood up and rushed into the living room.
“But the front door is that way,” he protested.
“Oh we don’t use the front door,” Rose responded tugging his arm.
Kenny found himself standing in front of the fireplace filled with green flames.
He gulped.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok, the fireplace thing didn’t hurt as much as Kenny expected it to. He hardly felt the fire at all. He was, however, still nauseous from the sight of the other fireplaces whipping past. Rose had told him it might be a good idea to close his eyes, but he was traveling in a fireplace
for Gods sake! He wasn’t going to not look.
He was amazed by the security they had to go through to get to Rose’s mother. There were a least four different people they had to talk to, all of whom seemed to know both Rose and Lily really well. They continued to have to explain what he was doing there. It was then that he found out that Rose’s mother was the Minister of Something-or-other, like their President. He had to get special security clearance and was told by a rather intimidating man that he wouldn’t be allowed in this part of the hospital without someone from the Weasely family. Lily had just laughed at the giant man and said that her dad (who Kenny realized was these men’s boss) would make sure he was clean. Awesome.
Everyone around there had those sticks that Rose and Lily carried around, their wands, he guessed. He was still surprised every time someone waved one and stuff happened. It was all so crazy.
Now they were sitting in the whitest hospital room he had ever seen. Rose had introduced him to her father, but he was understandably distracted. Kenny hadn’t seen him move from his seat next to the bed in hours. Rose’s Aunt Ginny said he doesn’t move for days, and even then they have to force him. He thought it was all very sad, but at the same time he was encouraged by the sheer amount of family Rose appeared to have. It seemed like every ten minutes he was meeting a new cousin or aunt or uncle, he met her grandparents and her brother, who had been that skinny kid he had crashed into that night at Rose’s dorm. He apologized profusely for it, but Hugo was a pretty cool guy, and told him not to worry. Kenny actually was really enjoying meeting all of these people in Rose’s life. He wished it was under better circumstances, but what can you do.
Kenny shifted slightly in his seat. He was kind of uncomfortable, but Rose had fallen asleep on his shoulder and he didn’t want to wake her. She looked so peaceful, and he found himself wondering if she was dreaming.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She was walking down the halls at Hogwarts, so familiar, but so different at the same time. She had a mirror in her hands and for some reason she couldn’t remember, she thought it would be a good idea to check around the corner with it before she looked that way. She had been doing it all the way from the library. The hallways were surprisingly dark, and there were less people around than she remembered. When she went to turn the next corner, she again looked in the mirror first. Reflected in it was an enormous pair of yellow eyes…
Rose’s eyes shot open as she awoke with a start. She looked around and realized she was in her mother’s hospital room. But that dream had been so real. She gave her head a little shake to clear it when the person she had been using for a pillow spoke.
“Hey there sleepy head, are you alright?” Kenny smiled down at her.
She smiled back, “Yeah, just dreaming I guess,” She still had a perplexed look on her face.
“You sure,” Kenny asked, “You look kind of freaked out,”
She quickly changed her expression, “No, it was just weird that’s all. Have you ever had a dream that you swear was real?”
“Sure, you’re right those are weird,”
“Yeah, really weird…” Rose didn’t know where her mind got some of this stuff. The last dream she had like that had been the one that had come from reading that stupid Rita Skeeter book. If she was honest with herself, the fact that she dreamed and remembered it at all was strange for her.
Maybe all the stress was starting to get to her.
“I don’t think this is going to be good,”
Harry and Ginny were sitting in their dining room arguing about what to do with Rose’s new found knowledge about their school years. Ginny decided she would talk to Rose. Ron had a lot on his plate right now.
“Aunt Ginny?!” they heard Rose’s voice in the other room.
“We’re in here sweetie,” Ginny called back.
Rose appeared at the door and Harry took that as his cue to leave. “Well ladies, you have a nice talk. I have to get to the office, we have another meeting with that prick Malfoy today. I know he’s up to something, but I can’t pin anything on him,”
The name flipped a switch in Rose’s brain, “Malfoy!” she had completely forgotten about her encounter with a Malfoy the same day Hugo had shown up at her door.
“What about him?” Harry asked.
“Scorpius, he came to see me at school. He said something about a job opportunity. He wanted me to work for him. Oh my God! He said I would be sorry for turning him down. Do you think he had something to do with my mom?!” she looked concerned that she hadn’t thought to tell Harry about that earlier.
“We don’t have any leads that way, but I’ll look into it. Thanks Rose,” Harry hurried out of the room.
Rose turned back and looked at her aunt. “Lily said you wanted to talk to me,”
Ginny nodded, “Why don’t you sit down,” Rose took the seat right across from Ginny. “The other day, at the hospital, why the interest in the war all of a sudden?”
“Oh, that,” she didn’t know why she didn’t let anyone know about what she was doing. Trying to know her mother better was a good thing. Regardless, she felt it wasn’t a very good idea to tell anyone just yet. “Um, I was reading a book and got confused. I thought the book was supposed to be non-fiction, I was wrong. Misunderstanding, that’s all.” She gave Ginny a big smile.
“Oh,” Ginny didn’t think it was going to be that easy. Ron was right, questions were Rose’s favorite form of sentence, and she usually kept asking them until she got all the answers she wanted. Not to mention she was too stubborn to ever admit she was wrong. “Because I wanted to let you know that digging around in that stuff probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.”
“Yeah I figured,” however, she actually wondered why Ginny thought it wouldn’t be a good idea, “Don’t worry about it Aunt Ginny, it’s already forgotten,”
“Good, ok, well I’m headed to the hospital,” she stood up “Are you going?”
“Yeah,” Rose thought about Kenny, “I have to go take care of something at home first. I’ll meet you there.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Rose got back to her house, she heard Kenny and Lily talking in the kitchen. Kenny seemed to be asking questions and Lily was either answering them with explanations or just simply showing him.
Rose entered the kitchen to find Kenny sitting with an amazed look on his face while Lily turned all the china in the room into animals. She was turning a dinner plate into a turtle when she noticed Rose. “Hey, what did my mom want to talk to you about?”
“Oh nothing, what are you doing?”
“Just showing Kenny some of my mad Transfiguration skills,”
“She turned that plate into a turtle!” Kenny added with excitement.
“Mad Transfiguration skills huh?” Rose looked at the turtle on the table, “When’d you learn that, second year?” She took out her own wand and waved it at Lily. Instantly, her ears started to grow and get pointy and her hair began to shorten. Soon she was standing there with the head of a fox with fur as red as her hair. “Now, that’s mad Transfiguration skills,” Rose said with triumph.
“Oh my God!” Kenny cried, “That was awesome!”
“C’mon Rose!” Lily’s voice coming out of the fox’s head made Rose start to laugh harder than she had in days, “Why do you always have to show everyone up like that? Put me back,”
“I think it works for you Lil,” Rose managed through snickers. Kenny had joined her in her amusement and was now almost falling out of his seat.
“I’m serious!” it was hard to take Lily seriously, “Rose Ginerva
Weasely I will curse you right here!”
“Fine, fine, calm down, you don’t have to middle name me,” Rose waved her wand again and Lily was back to normal.
Lily was clearly disgruntled by Rose’s spell. Her face blushed so bright, it threatened to match her hair. “He was totally impressed by what I was doing, you know,” she sat down at the table with her arms crossed across her chest.
“I’m sorry Lily. I just couldn’t resist. Will you ever forgive me?” Rose jutted out her bottom lip into a very insincere sad face.
“Alright, I’m better at Quidditch anyway, and that’s what’s really important,” she gave a mocking smile.
“That’s debatable, but we won’t get into that now. I want to show you something,” Rose went to the counter where she had placed her mother’s folder earlier. She brought it over and handed it to Lily.
On her way back from the Potter’s, Rose had decided that this was going to a lot harder than she originally thought. Despite her reluctance to tell Ginny, she thought that it might be a smart to find someone to help her. Judging by Ginny’s lack of desire to see the matter pursued, she figured none of the adults would be much help. (Well technically she guessed her and Lily were adults, she was almost 22 and Lily had just turned 20, but she, along with everyone else, still thought of her parents and aunts and uncles as ‘the adults’ and her and her cousins as ‘the kids.’) Lily was her best friend, her favorite cousin. They had been through a lot together and she realized that Lily would probably be all over finding this stuff out.
Lily scanned the contents of the folder and looked up at Rose. “Where did you get this?”
“My mom’s office,” Rose sat down across from Lily, “I think there’s a lot more in their pasts than they’re letting on. I think they’ve been lying to us,” Ok this might have been in exaggeration. Dumbledore had told her that they just weren’t telling them everything, that’s not exactly lying.
“So?”
“Don’t you want to know what they really did?” Rose leaned in towards her cousin, “They fought in the most important war of the 20th century and there’s stuff they are deliberately keeping from us. Don’t you want to know why?”
Lily didn’t look very convinced. Rose grabbed the folder out of her hands and rummaged though it. “Look,” she pulled out Hermione’s Hogwarts letter as well as the paper with all her math from before, “Your mom and my mom supposedly graduated from Hogwarts the same year right?”
“Yeah,” Lily replied, “My mom has a picture of the two of them on the mantle,”
“Ok,” Rose continued, “My mom made the Head Girl speech. I know, because when I graduated Headmaster Martin made such a big deal about it being exactly 25 years since my mother made her speech,”
“Yeah I remember, you didn’t want to make it,”
“Right. Ok, now look at the letter,”
Lily looked at the old piece of parchment Rose had thrust in her hands, “It’s your mom’s first Hogwarts letter, so?”
“Look at the date,”
“15 July 1991, again I ask, so?”
“Lily! Seven years past 1991 is 1998, twenty five years before 2024 is 1999!”
“Wait, what?” Lily was starting to realize where Rose was going.
“It doesn’t add up. If she started school in 1991 and graduated in 1999, she would have spent eight years at Hogwarts,”
“People do it. It’s not unheard of,”
“Yeah, people do it. Stupid people do it, people who fail! She didn’t fail!”
“How do you know?”
Rose just glared at Lily.
“Ok you’re right, I’d have a pretty hard time believing Aunt Hermione failed something. So what happened?”
“I don’t know!” Rose through her hands up in frustration, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I read this book that said that the whole war thing was a lot more complicated than we thought…”
Lily put her hand up to stop her, “Ok I understand that this is shifty. But my question is why do you care? I mean, it doesn’t involve us,”
“Someone told me once,” she didn’t think Lily would believe the Dumbledore part until she took her to the Ministry herself, “that in order to be close to someone, it helps to understand what it’s like to live their life, to understand things they went through. I thought maybe if I knew more about her…”
“Oh,” Lily looked down at her lap. She knew Rose’s relationship with Hermione wasn’t great. She knew that both of them hated the way they always fought, but couldn’t figure out how to stop it. It was just then that Lily gave a thought to how Rose must be feeling. Her mom was unconscious in the hospital with honestly little hope of recovery, and the last conversation she had had with her was a rather intense argument. Lily remembered; she was there. It wasn’t like Rose to pursue things without thinking them all the way through, her brothers definitely, her cousin Fred, probably, but certainly not Rose. This must mean a lot to her. “Ok, Rosie,” she placed her hand on top of her cousin’s, “I’ll help you,”
Rose looked up and smiled at Lily. She knew Lily would have her back, even if it did sound crazy, which she was fully aware that it did.
“I’ll help too,” Kenny chimed in again, feeling a little left out.
“Ok, but I think you have other things to worry about,” Rose responded with a smile.
“What?”
“We have to go to the hospital,”
Lily turned to him with the same devious smile Rose had one and wiggled her eyebrows at him. “C’mon loverboy, let’s go,” she stood up and rushed into the living room.
“But the front door is that way,” he protested.
“Oh we don’t use the front door,” Rose responded tugging his arm.
Kenny found himself standing in front of the fireplace filled with green flames.
He gulped.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok, the fireplace thing didn’t hurt as much as Kenny expected it to. He hardly felt the fire at all. He was, however, still nauseous from the sight of the other fireplaces whipping past. Rose had told him it might be a good idea to close his eyes, but he was traveling in a fireplace
for Gods sake! He wasn’t going to not look.
He was amazed by the security they had to go through to get to Rose’s mother. There were a least four different people they had to talk to, all of whom seemed to know both Rose and Lily really well. They continued to have to explain what he was doing there. It was then that he found out that Rose’s mother was the Minister of Something-or-other, like their President. He had to get special security clearance and was told by a rather intimidating man that he wouldn’t be allowed in this part of the hospital without someone from the Weasely family. Lily had just laughed at the giant man and said that her dad (who Kenny realized was these men’s boss) would make sure he was clean. Awesome.
Everyone around there had those sticks that Rose and Lily carried around, their wands, he guessed. He was still surprised every time someone waved one and stuff happened. It was all so crazy.
Now they were sitting in the whitest hospital room he had ever seen. Rose had introduced him to her father, but he was understandably distracted. Kenny hadn’t seen him move from his seat next to the bed in hours. Rose’s Aunt Ginny said he doesn’t move for days, and even then they have to force him. He thought it was all very sad, but at the same time he was encouraged by the sheer amount of family Rose appeared to have. It seemed like every ten minutes he was meeting a new cousin or aunt or uncle, he met her grandparents and her brother, who had been that skinny kid he had crashed into that night at Rose’s dorm. He apologized profusely for it, but Hugo was a pretty cool guy, and told him not to worry. Kenny actually was really enjoying meeting all of these people in Rose’s life. He wished it was under better circumstances, but what can you do.
Kenny shifted slightly in his seat. He was kind of uncomfortable, but Rose had fallen asleep on his shoulder and he didn’t want to wake her. She looked so peaceful, and he found himself wondering if she was dreaming.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She was walking down the halls at Hogwarts, so familiar, but so different at the same time. She had a mirror in her hands and for some reason she couldn’t remember, she thought it would be a good idea to check around the corner with it before she looked that way. She had been doing it all the way from the library. The hallways were surprisingly dark, and there were less people around than she remembered. When she went to turn the next corner, she again looked in the mirror first. Reflected in it was an enormous pair of yellow eyes…
Rose’s eyes shot open as she awoke with a start. She looked around and realized she was in her mother’s hospital room. But that dream had been so real. She gave her head a little shake to clear it when the person she had been using for a pillow spoke.
“Hey there sleepy head, are you alright?” Kenny smiled down at her.
She smiled back, “Yeah, just dreaming I guess,” She still had a perplexed look on her face.
“You sure,” Kenny asked, “You look kind of freaked out,”
She quickly changed her expression, “No, it was just weird that’s all. Have you ever had a dream that you swear was real?”
“Sure, you’re right those are weird,”
“Yeah, really weird…” Rose didn’t know where her mind got some of this stuff. The last dream she had like that had been the one that had come from reading that stupid Rita Skeeter book. If she was honest with herself, the fact that she dreamed and remembered it at all was strange for her.
Maybe all the stress was starting to get to her.
