A Beginning
Pairing: Scorpius/Rose
Summary: When Rose has some strange trouble at work, Scorpius is the friendly Unspeakable who comes in to help.
Rating: NC-17
Length: 5,267
Warnings: None
Written for smutty_claus. Thank you to xxx_angelin_xxx for beta reading.
Timothy Tiptoft had been going through his museum’s records, which were jumbled, outdated, and provided no accurate guide to what the museum possessed and what it didn’t.
“Generations of employees have probably been selling exhibits on the black market,” Rose was stupid enough to remark in Tiptoft’s hearing. Tiptoft cast a suspicious glance at her for form’s sake, but didn’t seem to really consider her potentially felonious.
“Merlin knows you’ve got all the stuff you could ever need around here,” said Annis, who worked on translating runic manuscripts with Rose. The lack of organisation and air of somnolence in the museum offended her sensibilities, and she generally liked to ignore her surroundings and pretend she worked somewhere more obviously a hive of modern intellectual striving. Rose just liked that she’d found somewhere she could say she was using her brain and please her mother, but be careless of things like whether she arrived late and left early.
“But is it the right stuff?” asked Tiptoft, and went down to the basement to look for a picture that apparently depicted goblins standing outside Gringotts soon after it was first opened. When he came up, Rose and Annis heard him go in to Joseph Jones, who came in to restore paintings. Then he opened their door and chucked a slab of mildewed parchment onto a table.
“Runic stuff I found down there. If you could just find out what it all is in the next few days - no need to set to work on it properly if you’re busy with other things,” said Tiptoft.
Rose gingerly unpeeled the slab into three, bindings just about holding to keep them discrete.
“I suppose we might as well start on them tomorrow. We’ll have finished these spells by then,” sighed Annis. They’d been working on some old medical spells, some of which sounded very dodgy. The smell of damp gave Annis a headache, but she was always hopeful of making some exciting discovery.
Excitement was relative in their business, but even though none of the volumes proved the next day to be Merlin’s memoirs, at least they were histories of Viking wizards’ feuds rather than account books. Rose was absorbed in her work, trying to give her translation a bit of storytelling verve, when the door opened and shut apparently of its own accord. She and Annis both looked up, but didn’t bother to comment. The wind quite suddenly began whistling in the chimney, which was slightly odd because it was summer. And yes, British weather and all that, but it still looked like quite a nice day out of the window.
“That tree across the road is perfectly still,” said Rose, in tones that came out a little more ominous than she’d meant. The wind became a howl in the chimney. There was something unpleasantly singling out and direct about it.
“Perhaps we’ve finally acquired a ghost. All these old things, you’d think we’d be overrun with them,” said Annis.
Rose felt as if she could almost see the gale pour out of the chimney and wind its way round the room in spirals, snatching up anything light enough. The window rattled in premonition of the thunder that seemed to roll around the room. The floor vibrated beneath Rose’s feet.
“Perhaps the ghost is a murderous Viking,” suggested Rose. They were both quite pleasantly curious, but when the rain started they shrieked and dived to protect any antique parchment left exposed. Then they tried the door, and found it stuck.
“Shit,” said Rose. She tucked her already wet hair behind her ear and wondered if she knew any spells to dislodge uncannily unpleasant magical presences. She didn’t think she did. Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts was primarily interested in malign, live people and animals.
“Impervio isn’t working against the rain,” Annis said dolefully. She drew back in indignant alarm as Scorpius Malfoy Apparated into the room, unexpectedly, needless to say, close to her. Annis and Rose looked at him for the startled moment it took to place him. Rose hadn’t seen him since their final year at Hogwarts. She hadn’t heard anything about him, either, which wasn’t the case for most of her old classmates, and in later years she’d spared a fleeting moment or two of wondering in his direction.
“Apparition is working, is it?” asked Rose. “Well, what are you doing here?”
“I think it probably isn’t, for you,” said Scorpius. He took out an armful of magical tools from an inside pocket and scanned the room with them all, before writing in a little notebook. These actions made Rose take account of his robes.
“So that’s what you did after school; you’re an Unspeakable,” said Rose. She felt unaccountably irritated. There had been something sweet about Scorpius at school, but also something earnest and a little distant, and it just seemed smug for him to end up in the Department of Mysteries.
“How did you know to come here?” asked Annis. She had to shout; the room was now creaking like a ship on a stormy sea. Rose looked up at the ceiling, the rain falling into her face. She hoped chunks of plaster weren’t going to come loose.
Scorpius shrugged apologetically. At least he didn’t say, “It’s a mystery” like the most annoying Unspeakables.
“And now you’re here, what are you going to do?” asked Rose.
“I’m actually more here to see what it is rather than do something about it,” said Scorpius. Rose and Annis turned deliberately outraged faces towards him. “We did receive an impression there wasn’t any immediate threat,” he added.
“Will it blow over?” asked Rose.
“Oh yes. Hopefully, sooner rather than later,” said Scorpius.
“And you’re going to stay until it does?” Annis asked sternly.
“Oh yes,” said Scorpius. He crossed his arms and looked at the rain coming down, as if to reassure them that he was keeping an eye on it. What with all that training Unspeakables went in for, he was probably quite new to the job.
Rose had a bright idea. “Let’s sit under the table, where it’s not so wet,” she said. As well as Rose and Annis’s desks there was a large, high table in the room, and if you had to sit under a table it was quite a good one. “Of course, if the rain never stops and we can’t get out, eventually the water will rise and we’ll drown,” she said as they were shuffling about trying to make themselves comfortable.
“Oh, that’s not going to happen,” said Scorpius. Rose amused herself noticing how obviously he was saying it as part of his job to be calm, in control and in the know, but then somehow she felt a touch of genuine alarm that she hadn’t before. “No, really, this is the first sign of trouble, isn’t it? No one’s going to die straight off. And we’ll monitor the future situation.”
“I don’t like the idea of being spied on,” said Annis.
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Scorpius.
“And things don’t always follow your neatly charted trends or whatever it is you’re going off - a crystal ball for all I know. There’s always the time it all goes horribly wrong,” Annis said darkly.
Scorpius looked politely exasperated.
“Of course, we have no idea how often the Department of Mysteries cocks up, because you’re shrouded in secrecy,” Rose pointed out. Scorpius looked very much like someone spending their workday sitting under a table in a raining room with two critical people. “I’m assuming this is about these histories of wizarding Vikings we’ve just dug up from the basement?” said Rose.
“I’d imagine so, something that’s been here a while but has been recently disturbed. It’s probably not even strong enough to be cursed. If it is it’ll work its way up to it and we’ll have plenty of time to take steps.”
“So we can keep working on them?” asked Annis, whose interest had probably increased tenfold since the project began to look a little more difficult.
“For now, if you want to. So.” Scorpius looked at the underside of the table as if to illustrate their small stock of resources and that they had now better begin to try and pass the time. “You two started working here after you left school, didn’t you?”
“Yes. We were just learning at first, but then the witch who was in charge left to work for a big museum in Germany,” said Rose.
They talked about runes a little bit, and Professor Maint, who taught Runes at Hogwarts, and how apparently Scorpius had longed all through school to be an Unspeakable, and how in some parts it was exactly what he’d wanted, and how in others it had been a little too unexpected, and how Rose’s cousin James had just made the England Quidditch team, and how Rose’s father sometimes felt he had to disown his wife and children for being so uninterested in watching James play Quidditch, and how Annis’s boyfriend had a deep dark grudge against James for Quidditch reasons and always referred to Rose as “that girl you work with who’s Potter’s cousin” in an unfriendly brooding way, and how Rose didn’t have a boyfriend right now, her last having been Ethan Finspeare, if Scorpius remembered him, a few years ahead of them, in Gryffindor, and how she had realised mercifully quickly how awful he was. And so on.
Altogether they did quite well at getting a nice conversation together. Rose was looking at Scorpius’s face a fair bit, just in the course of things, and she decided he’d grown into himself and was now rather handsome. Though, of course, blonds weren’t really her thing.
“It’s getting quieter,” said Annis.
“Yes,” said Rose. “You going out with anyone at the moment, Scorpius?”
“Er, no, actually,” said Scorpius.
“It’s slowed to a drip,” continued Annis.
“Let’s stop crouching under here,” said Rose, crawling out.
Scorpius went to try the door, which opened. “I think it’s alright now. Can you take it from here, if I-”
“No, that’s fine, you go back to work,” said Annis. “It’s not as if he did anything,” she said when he’d Disapparated.
The next day or so was perfectly alright. In terms of content, the manuscript Rose was working on was strong stuff; she’d got to the incest and Inferi now. But there was no trouble, and she and Annis agreed they couldn’t even feel a horrid atmosphere about the parchment.
Rose went after work to have a drink with her friend Maria. Maria had been on holiday, and Rose had waited until she returned to have the pleasure of telling her in person about the small kerfuffle at work rather than sending an owl that might have missed her. When they parted Rose decided to walk the short distance to her flat. It was a nice evening.
Rose was distracted from the balmy air by a voice, a murmur at her ear. She swung round quickly, anticipating someone’s nasty damp breath on her neck. The murmur returned, feeling more obviously lodged in her ears now she could see there was no one near her. It was not a nice feeling, even less so than she could have imagined, like a personal persecution. She shook her head, and the voice sounded louder.
It was pronouncing runes, Rose realised, though she was too distracted to notice if any words were being spelt out. It was somehow a relief to remember that of course, it was that nonsense back again. Three runes, etched black in the air, chased each other round her head. Rose stood feeling silly and exasperated, and hoped no Muggle saw her. The noise in her ears intensified, as if someone was bending down to yell at her. She took a brisk couple of steps forwards, deciding to try and take all this home with her, and summon appropriate help there. As if her ankle was tied tight, she fell full-length on the pavement. The wind was knocked out of her and her eyes filled with furious tears.
She had taken the time to buy and read some of a book of jinxes to use against “Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-Legged Beasties.” She used a couple now, still on the ground, feeling a little disempowered by not knowing quite where to point her wand. Everything went quiet, nonetheless.
She got up and pulled her clothes straight, and looked around to make sure there was still nobody around close enough to observe her. Scorpius Malfoy stepped out from behind a tree across the road and nearly got run over hurrying across the road.
“You could be quicker off the mark,” Rose told him. “It’s been and gone. For now, anyway.”
“Really? Oh dear, I am sorry,” said Scorpius, in that proper-but-just-natural-enough way of his. “But you’re alright?”
“I suppose so. It was speaking in my ears, I didn’t like it at all. Look, I don’t really want to give them to the Department of Mysteries or sling them back in the basement or something, but is there anything else we can do?”
“Well. Going by what you say about the content, I’m wondering if it’s not only that they’ve absorbed some dark magic, but that they don’t want to be translated. Family secrets and everything. Doesn’t everyone like to think of that kind of thing as eventually just ... fading and being forgotten and not mattering anymore?”
Rose felt slightly awkward. Scorpius’s words were rather redolent of Malfoys and Death Eaters. Though Scorpius had always seemed tranquilly unaware of tensions like that. And to be fond and proud of his father. Was there really a little bit of shame there as well?
“I can understand that, but dragging things into the light is basically what my job is all about,” said Rose.
“That’s a nice way of putting it. I mean, actually quite nice, not being sarcastic. I was a little bit surprised you went into that, to be honest. It seemed quieter than your kind of thing,” Scorpius said.
“I hate to say it, but I’m not sure we’re going anywhere good with this,” said Rose. “Either I turned out disappointingly more boring than you thought I was, or you approve of boring and are pleased I assimilated.”
“Sorry, it was an awkward thing to say. I just mean that nothing is boring! It’s all good!” Scorpius protested.
“I think I’m just a little sensitive,” Rose said. “People seemed to assume I was a “wild Weasley” at school and expected me to run away to join the circus or something.”
“A complex about being boring! Not something I’d have expected. Sorry, I’m coming off like I watched you from the shadows or something.”
“I always thought you didn’t like me much. Was it a cover for a tempestuous crush?” Rose said teasingly.
“I was ambivalent,” said Scorpius. He laughed, and somehow the conversation seemed less awkward than it should be.
It was at this point that Rose saw a rune wind its way round Scorpius’s ankle like a cat, and head between Rose’s feet. She stepped back smartly, only to realise there were several runes standing behind her. She felt a mix of anxiety and disgust, like stepping on some unpleasant kind of creature. Scorpius bent down to look, but somehow managed to fall over backwards, while Rose felt herself being blown several paces down the road. The only way she could stop herself and turn round was to sit down, which she did. She looked round to see Scorpius struggling up, rubbing his back. As she looked, his eyes widened.
“Can you hear it? No, just me? It is creepy, isn’t it?” Scorpius said, looking mildly annoyed. He took out his wand and cast a few of what Rose assumed to be defensive spells. He continued to look irritated, so Rose helpfully repeated her jinxes. She liked to think it helped, but while Scorpius’s brow smoothed soon, it didn’t right away, so she wasn’t sure. For the second time she got to her feet.
“So where were you going? Home?” Scorpius asked.
“Yeah. It’s not far,” said Rose. They walked on together. When they got to Rose’s flat, she had a sudden urge to ask him to come in. In an uninoccent way. She’d been looking at his collarbones on the way and suddenly realised she wanted to lick the hollows they made. She wouldn’t mind seeing what he was like in bed. But she felt slightly odd about the tension between the went-to-Hogwarts-with-him way of knowing him, and the met-him-twice-since-then way of knowing him. Perhaps he’d just look slightly embarrassed and cold if she indicated something like that, rather than relaxing.
They hesitated on the steps outside. Rose thought he must have picked up something of her thoughts to know there was anything to hesitate about. “Well. Hopefully it’s really gone for today,” she said.
“If you have any trouble and no one comes, don’t hesitate to owl me,” said Scorpius. Then he said goodbye rather nicely.
Rose thought of something she should have considered before. If being menaced at night by mysterious things was a possibility, she should make sure she wore something to bed.
In fact, it was Annis who received a visitation in the night, Rose was informed the next morning. The bed began to smoulder - Annis faltered here and specified that she and her boyfriend, Stephen, had been asleep at the time - and they had woken to find Scorpius Malfoy at their bedside dousing them with water. “He was very apologetic,” Annis admitted. “He spent a lot of time trying to calm down Stephen, who was surprisingly shook up.”
“It’s not really the kind of thing you imagine Unspeakables doing, is it, putting out fires? But then maybe the real secret about them is they’re less exciting than you’d think,” said Rose.
There were more incidents in the next few weeks. Sometimes they came thick and fast and sometimes there was nothing for nearly a week. Sometimes it was things like everyone in the museum swooping about in the air, unable to put their feet on the ground, which they decided to find fun, sometimes it was things like tongues of flame flickering up when they hit the typewriter keys, and sometimes it was the same routine of runes in ears and in the air, and being pushed to the ground.
Rose became accustomed to Scorpius popping up. She was, on the whole, enjoying the unpredictability of this whole kind-of-haunted-by-runic-manuscripts thing. It wasn’t as if anything really bad had happened so far and, while she hadn’t had any more near-proposition moments, it was nice becoming more familiar with Scorpius.
“Whatever will you both do when this is over?” asked Annis, picking up on this. “You’ll be lost without your bit of flirting to break up your day. And he probably has ethical dilemma, torn between hoping to get the message, or whatever happens, and worrying that this time it’s serious.”
“I’m not flirting, I’m just being nicer than you,” Rose protested, more to prevent Annis getting the upper hand than anything else. Annis preserved the same air of critical patronage towards Scorpius, not that it was anything personal.
Sometimes Scorpius, presumably employed elsewhere, was replaced by other Unspeakables, which even Annis found disconcerting. They were not as congenial and glad to help as Scorpius. They seemed to regard the business as a waste of their resources. Tiptoft, who was beginning to be weary himself of the worry and disruption, was nevertheless good enough to stress the importance of historical discovery. The Unspeakable he spoke to snottily said he didn’t need to emphasise that to them, and it was merely the suitability of the environment and the degree to which it was equipped to undertake the rigours of historical discovery that was in question. They all nearly choked on their outrage, and when Scorpius next appeared he was hailed with complaints about his colleague.
“Yes, there’s a tendency to superiority complexes in this job, I’m afraid. You feel you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders and no one appreciates you because no one even knows. Well, I say ‘you’, but I do try not to succumb,” he said. And he helped clean up the mess that was left after a bunch of runes had run about behaving like Nifflers.
“It’s a very eccentric curse - slash - haunting,” said Rose. It did seem somewhat of a waste of Scorpius’s time, she had to admit, and if that very rude Unspeakable came back she could always suggest that maybe they didn’t actually need help at all.
She nearly drowned in the bath the next night, which required a little adjustment to her judgment of the curse - slash - haunting as a harmless, almost loveable nuisance. Her suspicions were aroused by the way the water was slopping quite violently from one end of the bath to the other, though she wasn’t shuffling around or anything. She was about to get out, but something seemed to seize her feet, so that she was pulled down on her back in the bath with her legs in the air. Of course, Rose struggled violently, but she was not able to break free of the water. Her lungs burned and she thought of her parents receiving the news and she flailed with anguish now.
Her fist connected with a body; she was so relieved she swallowed even more bathwater. Hands were pulling her up by the shoulders and there she was sitting safely in the bath again. She gasped and spluttered and coughed for some time, and by the time she’d finished and wiped her bleary smarting eyes she felt settled back into life.
She looked up and found Scorpius, still looking a little worried, and carefully at nothing but her face. Rose picked up her wand, which she probably shouldn’t with wet hands, and said, at the same time as Scorpius, “Accio towel!” The towel zoomed towards her, and she stepped out of the bath and into it while Scorpius turned his back.
“Well, that was a nasty moment,” Rose said, perching on the side of the bath.
“It was. I didn’t think you were dead when I got here because I could see you moving, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pull you up,” said Scorpius. “Are you sure you’re alright now?”
“Yes, I think I can feel post near-death-experience euphoria beginning to course through me now,” said Rose, which was true. Her bedraggled reflection in the mirror opposite seemed to have an unexplained but pleasant glow. She felt full of confidence and energy. She almost wanted to rush out into the night in her towel.
“Would you like tea or some other hot drink or - something?” asked Scorpius.
“No thanks,” said Rose. She almost thought of opening her towel before letting it fall to the ground, taking in Scorpius’s expression and stepping towards him to place a firm hand on the back of his neck. She was almost as sure as she could be that he would welcome it and it would be fun, but something slowed her impulses. She wandered into her bedroom and sat on her bed, waiting for them to catch up with her, Scorpius trailing in behind her.
“Oh, your hair’s wet,” Rose realised. “You got splashed, did you?”
“No - well, my sleeves got wet. Actually I was having a shower myself and it was a horrible flap getting dressed. It was like a telescoped moral dilemma or something: how dressed do you get to go and see if someone’s in danger and how do you juggle the risks of wasting valuable time versus turning up naked for a minor problem?”
Rose noticed now that he was barefoot. Otherwise, he looked fully-dressed. “I take it you forsook underwear, then,” she said.
Scorpius laughed in acknowledgement. Then he smiled in a particularly fond was, so that a dimple showed in his cheek.
Rose held his eyes and smiled back. Then she unfolded herself from the towel and, meeting Scorpius in a few steps, lasped the back of his neck and kissed him. Scorpius was smiling too much to kiss her back at first, but then, one hand on the small of her back, the other tracing loose circles over her hip and buttock, he returned her kiss. The kiss went from soft and slow to hard and fast and was excellent in both aspects. Rose pressed her breasts against his chest, enjoying the sensation of his shirt against them.
She drew back again to sit on the bed. Scorpius crouched down and pulled her knees apart. He parted her lips with his fingers and traced her folds with his tongue. Rose wriggled in excitement, her knees bumping his shoulders, but pushed him away. “Take them off!” she said.
His fingers went to his buttons, a little self-conscious but enjoying her eyes on him. When it came to the trousers, the suspense was soon over. The trail of hair on his stomach led to more hair, darker than the hair of his head but still fair. His cock jutted out, flushed. Rose put out a hand, felt its heat, squeezed his balls a little.
She jumped up and pushed him onto the bed. “Unless you were wanking in your shower, you haven’t had much time to move from ‘Oh no, someone’s drowning in the bath’ to’I’m going to sleep with Rose, I’m so excited’”-
“It doesn’t take long,” said Scorpius.
“So let’s see if a little more time helps.” Rose gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and moved down between his thighs. She kissed each of his inner thighs in turn, her finger inching down that trail of hair. She bit into him, only lightly, and licked the place. Her hand darted to his cock and circled round the base with her fingers. She hovered over his cock and contemplated it for a moment before dipping her head and licking his balls. She kept up a rhythm with the fingertips of her other hand on his thing near his arse cheek, nearly scratching the skin.
Rose shifted and kissed Scorpius’s mouth again, rubbing his nipples with her thumbs. He reached out to cup her breasts but she was already drawing back. His expression sharpened as, her legs spread above him, she made as if she was going to sit down on his cock. She only caught it between her thighs, however, and moved so that the head slipped in and out. Scorpius was ready to take that and tried to hold her hips so he could take control of the rhythm, but she eluded him. Kneeling between his legs again, holding his cock steady, she licked the shaft, and the shaft just below the head. Finally she took his cock in her mouth for a moment before letting it bob out and going back to licking her way waveringly round his cock. She thought his cock was redder now, and the head was wet not only with her spit but his precome.
“Never mind you, I’m ready to get on with it now,” Rose declared, drawing away all of a sudden.
They changed positions, Rose lying down with Scorpius leaning over her. He slid two fingers into her cunt. They came away as sticky as he could desire. Positioning himself between her thighs, he held her hips and arse in his hands so her sex was exposed at a great angle. Rose closed her eyes in relief as he entered her. She loved feeling his balls flush against her; it emphasized how full she was. She clamped her knees to his sides and pushed her hips up more, grinding against Scorpius as he began to thrust. He cupped her breasts as he’d tried to do earlier and she put her hands over his and encouraged him to knead them. Soon, that breathless concentration was over and they collapsed besides each other
*
Rose was dimly aware of Scorpius getting up a little while before her own alarm went off. He put his clothes back on and shook Rose’s shoulder. “I have to go home now, get ready for work,” he said. He kissed her briskly and Disapparated.
Rose thought happily of him while she was getting ready. Her hair was horrid this morning, even with all the charmed hair products in the world, but she felt it had been quite worth it. She always liked it when you’d known someone for a bit, but then you got to put them in the context of their own particular nakedness and what they were like in bed. They developed another dimension, and she could look forward to discovering more dimensions, and it was always, at this stage, going to be a lovely process.
It was, however, a bit of a crushing day at work. An Unspeakable appeared mid-morning, not Scorpius or the one they particularly disliked. They looked around at once for the source of trouble, but it wasn’t that kind of visit.
“We’ve found someone who’ll be able to carry on your work in a more controlled environment. I understand you’ll be disappointed, but the situation is an untenable strain on our department,” she said. “If we’re able to without ill effects, we’ll return the manuscripts.”
“I suppose it’ll look quite good if we display in the museum with a notice about the trouble they caused,” Tiptoft said grudgingly.
“I think it’s very hard. The most interesting project of my career so far and the Ministry confiscates it. I suppose we’re going to get credit where credit is due?” said Annis.
“Oh yes, it’ll be made clear that you were willing to persist in the endeavor despite personal hazard. And you’ll receive copies of the finished work.”
It was galling, for Rose as well as Annis, but they’d seen it coming and it seemed as though there was nothing to be done about it. The near-drowning had been a step too far, but their room seemed a different, emptier place when the manuscripts had been taken away. They had to start new projects, without the satisfactions of having just finished one.
In the afternoon, Rose got an owl from Scorpius.
Hi, I heard the Department has put the kibosh on you carrying on translating those manuscripts. I am sorry, because I know you’ll both feel it was an achievement taken away from you. Not entirely sorry, though, because I did begin to worry. I have something to ask you, and I hope you’re just going to laugh at me. Are you sure you wanted to have sex with me and you weren’t under some kind of magical influence? Or, I suppose, the influence of having narrowly escaped death and therefore having your judgment temporarily clouded? If it was all above board this sounds a bit unreasonable, perhaps, but I hope it was anyway.
Scorpius
Rose wrote back: Of course I wanted to, silly. I thought about fucking you that time you walked me home, and it had nothing to do with runes!
Scorpius’s owl in return expressed his appreciation of this knowledge, and would Rose like to go somewhere with him this evening? Annis grumpily commented on Rose’s cheerful attitude and said it was alright for Rose, but the novelty of Stephen had worn too thin to be of much comfort to her. And it only made Rose feel more serenely optimistic.
Summary: When Rose has some strange trouble at work, Scorpius is the friendly Unspeakable who comes in to help.
Rating: NC-17
Length: 5,267
Warnings: None
Written for smutty_claus. Thank you to xxx_angelin_xxx for beta reading.
Timothy Tiptoft had been going through his museum’s records, which were jumbled, outdated, and provided no accurate guide to what the museum possessed and what it didn’t.
“Generations of employees have probably been selling exhibits on the black market,” Rose was stupid enough to remark in Tiptoft’s hearing. Tiptoft cast a suspicious glance at her for form’s sake, but didn’t seem to really consider her potentially felonious.
“Merlin knows you’ve got all the stuff you could ever need around here,” said Annis, who worked on translating runic manuscripts with Rose. The lack of organisation and air of somnolence in the museum offended her sensibilities, and she generally liked to ignore her surroundings and pretend she worked somewhere more obviously a hive of modern intellectual striving. Rose just liked that she’d found somewhere she could say she was using her brain and please her mother, but be careless of things like whether she arrived late and left early.
“But is it the right stuff?” asked Tiptoft, and went down to the basement to look for a picture that apparently depicted goblins standing outside Gringotts soon after it was first opened. When he came up, Rose and Annis heard him go in to Joseph Jones, who came in to restore paintings. Then he opened their door and chucked a slab of mildewed parchment onto a table.
“Runic stuff I found down there. If you could just find out what it all is in the next few days - no need to set to work on it properly if you’re busy with other things,” said Tiptoft.
Rose gingerly unpeeled the slab into three, bindings just about holding to keep them discrete.
“I suppose we might as well start on them tomorrow. We’ll have finished these spells by then,” sighed Annis. They’d been working on some old medical spells, some of which sounded very dodgy. The smell of damp gave Annis a headache, but she was always hopeful of making some exciting discovery.
Excitement was relative in their business, but even though none of the volumes proved the next day to be Merlin’s memoirs, at least they were histories of Viking wizards’ feuds rather than account books. Rose was absorbed in her work, trying to give her translation a bit of storytelling verve, when the door opened and shut apparently of its own accord. She and Annis both looked up, but didn’t bother to comment. The wind quite suddenly began whistling in the chimney, which was slightly odd because it was summer. And yes, British weather and all that, but it still looked like quite a nice day out of the window.
“That tree across the road is perfectly still,” said Rose, in tones that came out a little more ominous than she’d meant. The wind became a howl in the chimney. There was something unpleasantly singling out and direct about it.
“Perhaps we’ve finally acquired a ghost. All these old things, you’d think we’d be overrun with them,” said Annis.
Rose felt as if she could almost see the gale pour out of the chimney and wind its way round the room in spirals, snatching up anything light enough. The window rattled in premonition of the thunder that seemed to roll around the room. The floor vibrated beneath Rose’s feet.
“Perhaps the ghost is a murderous Viking,” suggested Rose. They were both quite pleasantly curious, but when the rain started they shrieked and dived to protect any antique parchment left exposed. Then they tried the door, and found it stuck.
“Shit,” said Rose. She tucked her already wet hair behind her ear and wondered if she knew any spells to dislodge uncannily unpleasant magical presences. She didn’t think she did. Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts was primarily interested in malign, live people and animals.
“Impervio isn’t working against the rain,” Annis said dolefully. She drew back in indignant alarm as Scorpius Malfoy Apparated into the room, unexpectedly, needless to say, close to her. Annis and Rose looked at him for the startled moment it took to place him. Rose hadn’t seen him since their final year at Hogwarts. She hadn’t heard anything about him, either, which wasn’t the case for most of her old classmates, and in later years she’d spared a fleeting moment or two of wondering in his direction.
“Apparition is working, is it?” asked Rose. “Well, what are you doing here?”
“I think it probably isn’t, for you,” said Scorpius. He took out an armful of magical tools from an inside pocket and scanned the room with them all, before writing in a little notebook. These actions made Rose take account of his robes.
“So that’s what you did after school; you’re an Unspeakable,” said Rose. She felt unaccountably irritated. There had been something sweet about Scorpius at school, but also something earnest and a little distant, and it just seemed smug for him to end up in the Department of Mysteries.
“How did you know to come here?” asked Annis. She had to shout; the room was now creaking like a ship on a stormy sea. Rose looked up at the ceiling, the rain falling into her face. She hoped chunks of plaster weren’t going to come loose.
Scorpius shrugged apologetically. At least he didn’t say, “It’s a mystery” like the most annoying Unspeakables.
“And now you’re here, what are you going to do?” asked Rose.
“I’m actually more here to see what it is rather than do something about it,” said Scorpius. Rose and Annis turned deliberately outraged faces towards him. “We did receive an impression there wasn’t any immediate threat,” he added.
“Will it blow over?” asked Rose.
“Oh yes. Hopefully, sooner rather than later,” said Scorpius.
“And you’re going to stay until it does?” Annis asked sternly.
“Oh yes,” said Scorpius. He crossed his arms and looked at the rain coming down, as if to reassure them that he was keeping an eye on it. What with all that training Unspeakables went in for, he was probably quite new to the job.
Rose had a bright idea. “Let’s sit under the table, where it’s not so wet,” she said. As well as Rose and Annis’s desks there was a large, high table in the room, and if you had to sit under a table it was quite a good one. “Of course, if the rain never stops and we can’t get out, eventually the water will rise and we’ll drown,” she said as they were shuffling about trying to make themselves comfortable.
“Oh, that’s not going to happen,” said Scorpius. Rose amused herself noticing how obviously he was saying it as part of his job to be calm, in control and in the know, but then somehow she felt a touch of genuine alarm that she hadn’t before. “No, really, this is the first sign of trouble, isn’t it? No one’s going to die straight off. And we’ll monitor the future situation.”
“I don’t like the idea of being spied on,” said Annis.
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Scorpius.
“And things don’t always follow your neatly charted trends or whatever it is you’re going off - a crystal ball for all I know. There’s always the time it all goes horribly wrong,” Annis said darkly.
Scorpius looked politely exasperated.
“Of course, we have no idea how often the Department of Mysteries cocks up, because you’re shrouded in secrecy,” Rose pointed out. Scorpius looked very much like someone spending their workday sitting under a table in a raining room with two critical people. “I’m assuming this is about these histories of wizarding Vikings we’ve just dug up from the basement?” said Rose.
“I’d imagine so, something that’s been here a while but has been recently disturbed. It’s probably not even strong enough to be cursed. If it is it’ll work its way up to it and we’ll have plenty of time to take steps.”
“So we can keep working on them?” asked Annis, whose interest had probably increased tenfold since the project began to look a little more difficult.
“For now, if you want to. So.” Scorpius looked at the underside of the table as if to illustrate their small stock of resources and that they had now better begin to try and pass the time. “You two started working here after you left school, didn’t you?”
“Yes. We were just learning at first, but then the witch who was in charge left to work for a big museum in Germany,” said Rose.
They talked about runes a little bit, and Professor Maint, who taught Runes at Hogwarts, and how apparently Scorpius had longed all through school to be an Unspeakable, and how in some parts it was exactly what he’d wanted, and how in others it had been a little too unexpected, and how Rose’s cousin James had just made the England Quidditch team, and how Rose’s father sometimes felt he had to disown his wife and children for being so uninterested in watching James play Quidditch, and how Annis’s boyfriend had a deep dark grudge against James for Quidditch reasons and always referred to Rose as “that girl you work with who’s Potter’s cousin” in an unfriendly brooding way, and how Rose didn’t have a boyfriend right now, her last having been Ethan Finspeare, if Scorpius remembered him, a few years ahead of them, in Gryffindor, and how she had realised mercifully quickly how awful he was. And so on.
Altogether they did quite well at getting a nice conversation together. Rose was looking at Scorpius’s face a fair bit, just in the course of things, and she decided he’d grown into himself and was now rather handsome. Though, of course, blonds weren’t really her thing.
“It’s getting quieter,” said Annis.
“Yes,” said Rose. “You going out with anyone at the moment, Scorpius?”
“Er, no, actually,” said Scorpius.
“It’s slowed to a drip,” continued Annis.
“Let’s stop crouching under here,” said Rose, crawling out.
Scorpius went to try the door, which opened. “I think it’s alright now. Can you take it from here, if I-”
“No, that’s fine, you go back to work,” said Annis. “It’s not as if he did anything,” she said when he’d Disapparated.
The next day or so was perfectly alright. In terms of content, the manuscript Rose was working on was strong stuff; she’d got to the incest and Inferi now. But there was no trouble, and she and Annis agreed they couldn’t even feel a horrid atmosphere about the parchment.
Rose went after work to have a drink with her friend Maria. Maria had been on holiday, and Rose had waited until she returned to have the pleasure of telling her in person about the small kerfuffle at work rather than sending an owl that might have missed her. When they parted Rose decided to walk the short distance to her flat. It was a nice evening.
Rose was distracted from the balmy air by a voice, a murmur at her ear. She swung round quickly, anticipating someone’s nasty damp breath on her neck. The murmur returned, feeling more obviously lodged in her ears now she could see there was no one near her. It was not a nice feeling, even less so than she could have imagined, like a personal persecution. She shook her head, and the voice sounded louder.
It was pronouncing runes, Rose realised, though she was too distracted to notice if any words were being spelt out. It was somehow a relief to remember that of course, it was that nonsense back again. Three runes, etched black in the air, chased each other round her head. Rose stood feeling silly and exasperated, and hoped no Muggle saw her. The noise in her ears intensified, as if someone was bending down to yell at her. She took a brisk couple of steps forwards, deciding to try and take all this home with her, and summon appropriate help there. As if her ankle was tied tight, she fell full-length on the pavement. The wind was knocked out of her and her eyes filled with furious tears.
She had taken the time to buy and read some of a book of jinxes to use against “Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-Legged Beasties.” She used a couple now, still on the ground, feeling a little disempowered by not knowing quite where to point her wand. Everything went quiet, nonetheless.
She got up and pulled her clothes straight, and looked around to make sure there was still nobody around close enough to observe her. Scorpius Malfoy stepped out from behind a tree across the road and nearly got run over hurrying across the road.
“You could be quicker off the mark,” Rose told him. “It’s been and gone. For now, anyway.”
“Really? Oh dear, I am sorry,” said Scorpius, in that proper-but-just-natural-enough way of his. “But you’re alright?”
“I suppose so. It was speaking in my ears, I didn’t like it at all. Look, I don’t really want to give them to the Department of Mysteries or sling them back in the basement or something, but is there anything else we can do?”
“Well. Going by what you say about the content, I’m wondering if it’s not only that they’ve absorbed some dark magic, but that they don’t want to be translated. Family secrets and everything. Doesn’t everyone like to think of that kind of thing as eventually just ... fading and being forgotten and not mattering anymore?”
Rose felt slightly awkward. Scorpius’s words were rather redolent of Malfoys and Death Eaters. Though Scorpius had always seemed tranquilly unaware of tensions like that. And to be fond and proud of his father. Was there really a little bit of shame there as well?
“I can understand that, but dragging things into the light is basically what my job is all about,” said Rose.
“That’s a nice way of putting it. I mean, actually quite nice, not being sarcastic. I was a little bit surprised you went into that, to be honest. It seemed quieter than your kind of thing,” Scorpius said.
“I hate to say it, but I’m not sure we’re going anywhere good with this,” said Rose. “Either I turned out disappointingly more boring than you thought I was, or you approve of boring and are pleased I assimilated.”
“Sorry, it was an awkward thing to say. I just mean that nothing is boring! It’s all good!” Scorpius protested.
“I think I’m just a little sensitive,” Rose said. “People seemed to assume I was a “wild Weasley” at school and expected me to run away to join the circus or something.”
“A complex about being boring! Not something I’d have expected. Sorry, I’m coming off like I watched you from the shadows or something.”
“I always thought you didn’t like me much. Was it a cover for a tempestuous crush?” Rose said teasingly.
“I was ambivalent,” said Scorpius. He laughed, and somehow the conversation seemed less awkward than it should be.
It was at this point that Rose saw a rune wind its way round Scorpius’s ankle like a cat, and head between Rose’s feet. She stepped back smartly, only to realise there were several runes standing behind her. She felt a mix of anxiety and disgust, like stepping on some unpleasant kind of creature. Scorpius bent down to look, but somehow managed to fall over backwards, while Rose felt herself being blown several paces down the road. The only way she could stop herself and turn round was to sit down, which she did. She looked round to see Scorpius struggling up, rubbing his back. As she looked, his eyes widened.
“Can you hear it? No, just me? It is creepy, isn’t it?” Scorpius said, looking mildly annoyed. He took out his wand and cast a few of what Rose assumed to be defensive spells. He continued to look irritated, so Rose helpfully repeated her jinxes. She liked to think it helped, but while Scorpius’s brow smoothed soon, it didn’t right away, so she wasn’t sure. For the second time she got to her feet.
“So where were you going? Home?” Scorpius asked.
“Yeah. It’s not far,” said Rose. They walked on together. When they got to Rose’s flat, she had a sudden urge to ask him to come in. In an uninoccent way. She’d been looking at his collarbones on the way and suddenly realised she wanted to lick the hollows they made. She wouldn’t mind seeing what he was like in bed. But she felt slightly odd about the tension between the went-to-Hogwarts-with-him way of knowing him, and the met-him-twice-since-then way of knowing him. Perhaps he’d just look slightly embarrassed and cold if she indicated something like that, rather than relaxing.
They hesitated on the steps outside. Rose thought he must have picked up something of her thoughts to know there was anything to hesitate about. “Well. Hopefully it’s really gone for today,” she said.
“If you have any trouble and no one comes, don’t hesitate to owl me,” said Scorpius. Then he said goodbye rather nicely.
Rose thought of something she should have considered before. If being menaced at night by mysterious things was a possibility, she should make sure she wore something to bed.
In fact, it was Annis who received a visitation in the night, Rose was informed the next morning. The bed began to smoulder - Annis faltered here and specified that she and her boyfriend, Stephen, had been asleep at the time - and they had woken to find Scorpius Malfoy at their bedside dousing them with water. “He was very apologetic,” Annis admitted. “He spent a lot of time trying to calm down Stephen, who was surprisingly shook up.”
“It’s not really the kind of thing you imagine Unspeakables doing, is it, putting out fires? But then maybe the real secret about them is they’re less exciting than you’d think,” said Rose.
There were more incidents in the next few weeks. Sometimes they came thick and fast and sometimes there was nothing for nearly a week. Sometimes it was things like everyone in the museum swooping about in the air, unable to put their feet on the ground, which they decided to find fun, sometimes it was things like tongues of flame flickering up when they hit the typewriter keys, and sometimes it was the same routine of runes in ears and in the air, and being pushed to the ground.
Rose became accustomed to Scorpius popping up. She was, on the whole, enjoying the unpredictability of this whole kind-of-haunted-by-runic-manuscripts thing. It wasn’t as if anything really bad had happened so far and, while she hadn’t had any more near-proposition moments, it was nice becoming more familiar with Scorpius.
“Whatever will you both do when this is over?” asked Annis, picking up on this. “You’ll be lost without your bit of flirting to break up your day. And he probably has ethical dilemma, torn between hoping to get the message, or whatever happens, and worrying that this time it’s serious.”
“I’m not flirting, I’m just being nicer than you,” Rose protested, more to prevent Annis getting the upper hand than anything else. Annis preserved the same air of critical patronage towards Scorpius, not that it was anything personal.
Sometimes Scorpius, presumably employed elsewhere, was replaced by other Unspeakables, which even Annis found disconcerting. They were not as congenial and glad to help as Scorpius. They seemed to regard the business as a waste of their resources. Tiptoft, who was beginning to be weary himself of the worry and disruption, was nevertheless good enough to stress the importance of historical discovery. The Unspeakable he spoke to snottily said he didn’t need to emphasise that to them, and it was merely the suitability of the environment and the degree to which it was equipped to undertake the rigours of historical discovery that was in question. They all nearly choked on their outrage, and when Scorpius next appeared he was hailed with complaints about his colleague.
“Yes, there’s a tendency to superiority complexes in this job, I’m afraid. You feel you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders and no one appreciates you because no one even knows. Well, I say ‘you’, but I do try not to succumb,” he said. And he helped clean up the mess that was left after a bunch of runes had run about behaving like Nifflers.
“It’s a very eccentric curse - slash - haunting,” said Rose. It did seem somewhat of a waste of Scorpius’s time, she had to admit, and if that very rude Unspeakable came back she could always suggest that maybe they didn’t actually need help at all.
She nearly drowned in the bath the next night, which required a little adjustment to her judgment of the curse - slash - haunting as a harmless, almost loveable nuisance. Her suspicions were aroused by the way the water was slopping quite violently from one end of the bath to the other, though she wasn’t shuffling around or anything. She was about to get out, but something seemed to seize her feet, so that she was pulled down on her back in the bath with her legs in the air. Of course, Rose struggled violently, but she was not able to break free of the water. Her lungs burned and she thought of her parents receiving the news and she flailed with anguish now.
Her fist connected with a body; she was so relieved she swallowed even more bathwater. Hands were pulling her up by the shoulders and there she was sitting safely in the bath again. She gasped and spluttered and coughed for some time, and by the time she’d finished and wiped her bleary smarting eyes she felt settled back into life.
She looked up and found Scorpius, still looking a little worried, and carefully at nothing but her face. Rose picked up her wand, which she probably shouldn’t with wet hands, and said, at the same time as Scorpius, “Accio towel!” The towel zoomed towards her, and she stepped out of the bath and into it while Scorpius turned his back.
“Well, that was a nasty moment,” Rose said, perching on the side of the bath.
“It was. I didn’t think you were dead when I got here because I could see you moving, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pull you up,” said Scorpius. “Are you sure you’re alright now?”
“Yes, I think I can feel post near-death-experience euphoria beginning to course through me now,” said Rose, which was true. Her bedraggled reflection in the mirror opposite seemed to have an unexplained but pleasant glow. She felt full of confidence and energy. She almost wanted to rush out into the night in her towel.
“Would you like tea or some other hot drink or - something?” asked Scorpius.
“No thanks,” said Rose. She almost thought of opening her towel before letting it fall to the ground, taking in Scorpius’s expression and stepping towards him to place a firm hand on the back of his neck. She was almost as sure as she could be that he would welcome it and it would be fun, but something slowed her impulses. She wandered into her bedroom and sat on her bed, waiting for them to catch up with her, Scorpius trailing in behind her.
“Oh, your hair’s wet,” Rose realised. “You got splashed, did you?”
“No - well, my sleeves got wet. Actually I was having a shower myself and it was a horrible flap getting dressed. It was like a telescoped moral dilemma or something: how dressed do you get to go and see if someone’s in danger and how do you juggle the risks of wasting valuable time versus turning up naked for a minor problem?”
Rose noticed now that he was barefoot. Otherwise, he looked fully-dressed. “I take it you forsook underwear, then,” she said.
Scorpius laughed in acknowledgement. Then he smiled in a particularly fond was, so that a dimple showed in his cheek.
Rose held his eyes and smiled back. Then she unfolded herself from the towel and, meeting Scorpius in a few steps, lasped the back of his neck and kissed him. Scorpius was smiling too much to kiss her back at first, but then, one hand on the small of her back, the other tracing loose circles over her hip and buttock, he returned her kiss. The kiss went from soft and slow to hard and fast and was excellent in both aspects. Rose pressed her breasts against his chest, enjoying the sensation of his shirt against them.
She drew back again to sit on the bed. Scorpius crouched down and pulled her knees apart. He parted her lips with his fingers and traced her folds with his tongue. Rose wriggled in excitement, her knees bumping his shoulders, but pushed him away. “Take them off!” she said.
His fingers went to his buttons, a little self-conscious but enjoying her eyes on him. When it came to the trousers, the suspense was soon over. The trail of hair on his stomach led to more hair, darker than the hair of his head but still fair. His cock jutted out, flushed. Rose put out a hand, felt its heat, squeezed his balls a little.
She jumped up and pushed him onto the bed. “Unless you were wanking in your shower, you haven’t had much time to move from ‘Oh no, someone’s drowning in the bath’ to’I’m going to sleep with Rose, I’m so excited’”-
“It doesn’t take long,” said Scorpius.
“So let’s see if a little more time helps.” Rose gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and moved down between his thighs. She kissed each of his inner thighs in turn, her finger inching down that trail of hair. She bit into him, only lightly, and licked the place. Her hand darted to his cock and circled round the base with her fingers. She hovered over his cock and contemplated it for a moment before dipping her head and licking his balls. She kept up a rhythm with the fingertips of her other hand on his thing near his arse cheek, nearly scratching the skin.
Rose shifted and kissed Scorpius’s mouth again, rubbing his nipples with her thumbs. He reached out to cup her breasts but she was already drawing back. His expression sharpened as, her legs spread above him, she made as if she was going to sit down on his cock. She only caught it between her thighs, however, and moved so that the head slipped in and out. Scorpius was ready to take that and tried to hold her hips so he could take control of the rhythm, but she eluded him. Kneeling between his legs again, holding his cock steady, she licked the shaft, and the shaft just below the head. Finally she took his cock in her mouth for a moment before letting it bob out and going back to licking her way waveringly round his cock. She thought his cock was redder now, and the head was wet not only with her spit but his precome.
“Never mind you, I’m ready to get on with it now,” Rose declared, drawing away all of a sudden.
They changed positions, Rose lying down with Scorpius leaning over her. He slid two fingers into her cunt. They came away as sticky as he could desire. Positioning himself between her thighs, he held her hips and arse in his hands so her sex was exposed at a great angle. Rose closed her eyes in relief as he entered her. She loved feeling his balls flush against her; it emphasized how full she was. She clamped her knees to his sides and pushed her hips up more, grinding against Scorpius as he began to thrust. He cupped her breasts as he’d tried to do earlier and she put her hands over his and encouraged him to knead them. Soon, that breathless concentration was over and they collapsed besides each other
*
Rose was dimly aware of Scorpius getting up a little while before her own alarm went off. He put his clothes back on and shook Rose’s shoulder. “I have to go home now, get ready for work,” he said. He kissed her briskly and Disapparated.
Rose thought happily of him while she was getting ready. Her hair was horrid this morning, even with all the charmed hair products in the world, but she felt it had been quite worth it. She always liked it when you’d known someone for a bit, but then you got to put them in the context of their own particular nakedness and what they were like in bed. They developed another dimension, and she could look forward to discovering more dimensions, and it was always, at this stage, going to be a lovely process.
It was, however, a bit of a crushing day at work. An Unspeakable appeared mid-morning, not Scorpius or the one they particularly disliked. They looked around at once for the source of trouble, but it wasn’t that kind of visit.
“We’ve found someone who’ll be able to carry on your work in a more controlled environment. I understand you’ll be disappointed, but the situation is an untenable strain on our department,” she said. “If we’re able to without ill effects, we’ll return the manuscripts.”
“I suppose it’ll look quite good if we display in the museum with a notice about the trouble they caused,” Tiptoft said grudgingly.
“I think it’s very hard. The most interesting project of my career so far and the Ministry confiscates it. I suppose we’re going to get credit where credit is due?” said Annis.
“Oh yes, it’ll be made clear that you were willing to persist in the endeavor despite personal hazard. And you’ll receive copies of the finished work.”
It was galling, for Rose as well as Annis, but they’d seen it coming and it seemed as though there was nothing to be done about it. The near-drowning had been a step too far, but their room seemed a different, emptier place when the manuscripts had been taken away. They had to start new projects, without the satisfactions of having just finished one.
In the afternoon, Rose got an owl from Scorpius.
Hi, I heard the Department has put the kibosh on you carrying on translating those manuscripts. I am sorry, because I know you’ll both feel it was an achievement taken away from you. Not entirely sorry, though, because I did begin to worry. I have something to ask you, and I hope you’re just going to laugh at me. Are you sure you wanted to have sex with me and you weren’t under some kind of magical influence? Or, I suppose, the influence of having narrowly escaped death and therefore having your judgment temporarily clouded? If it was all above board this sounds a bit unreasonable, perhaps, but I hope it was anyway.
Scorpius
Rose wrote back: Of course I wanted to, silly. I thought about fucking you that time you walked me home, and it had nothing to do with runes!
Scorpius’s owl in return expressed his appreciation of this knowledge, and would Rose like to go somewhere with him this evening? Annis grumpily commented on Rose’s cheerful attitude and said it was alright for Rose, but the novelty of Stephen had worn too thin to be of much comfort to her. And it only made Rose feel more serenely optimistic.