We Stand and Face the Storm (PG-13) 2/2
Title: We Stand and Face the Storm (2/2)
Author: realmer06
Prompt: "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best- Marilyn Monroe"
Summary: With gray eyes the color of thunderclouds and a temper to match her hair, Rose Weasley could be a whirlwind when infuriated. It was on these occasions that her shy little brother came into his own, for he would march straight into that whirlwind when no one else would go near, and turn his sister once more into a rational human being. He learned early on when to calm her and when to let her rage; she, on the other side, knew when to pull him forward and when to let him fade. They understood one another perfectly, and there were never any secrets between them. That was half the problem. Because being the eye of Rose’s storm meant Hugo got trapped in the middle of far more than he ever wanted to. The story of Rose and Scorpius from someone who has, most unfortunately, been present for most of the highlights.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some mild language
Word Count: (if applicable) overall, ~12,500
A/N:Hugo Weasley has long fascinated me, because he seems to disappear into the fandom's background, overshadowed always by his big sister. And so I started thinking, what if that's the way he was in "real" life? When I saw the prompt above, this idea was given form and direction, and I have so loved crafting the relationship of Rose and Scorpius as seen by an outside observer. Thanks so much to M, my faithful beta, and enjoy!
It was pouring rain the day the first time I really lost my temper with Scorpius.
It was the first rain of the spring, the first rain warm enough to go out and get soaked in, and I knew Rose would already be outside. Winter was a hard time for her, because dancing in the snow is not the same experience as dancing in the rain, and Madame Pomfrey has promised she will keep Rose on permanent castle arrest if she risks her health by dancing in the rare winter rains the way she did her first year.
This winter had been particularly hard on her as well, because out in the rain is the one time when Rose can truly let her barriers down, when her emotions don’t show on her face because the wetness and the redness come from the sky as much as from within. Her seventh year was harder for her than she had ever imagined it being, and not because of her NEWTs. It was hard to keep smiling and supporting Lila, who was intimidated by Scorpius’ new gruff demeanor that, Lila wasn’t wrong, he only turned on her. It certainly didn’t help that Lila had never had the most confidence in the world, anyway. She kept coming to Rose for help, which also wasn’t making the situation any easier.
“There are days,” she told me one cold day in February as we sat in the library and watched a cold misty rain trickle down outside, “when I look at Lila and have the awful thought, ‘This was really the better choice?’ And then I hate myself for thinking it because it doesn’t help Lila, and she is getting better. And on her good days, on my good days, I know she was the better choice.”
Yes, the winter had been hard, and as the days turned warmer, Rose kept a careful watch on the temperature, and the moment it crept above Madame Pomfrey’s limit, she was out the front doors and under Ravenclaw Tower, beckoning me down. With a smile, I finished the section of the essay I was working on and obliged her.
“Hugo?” Scorpius called out to me as I passed him in the Common Room. He was seated in a deep window seat, and I had the unshakeable feeling that he’d been watching Rose only moments before.
“Yes?” I asked. He looked away, steeling himself for whatever he was about to say, and then he turned back to me and spoke.
“I need your advice on something,” he said, his gaze drifting back to the window. I looked at him expectantly. “Hugo, if I - discovered something, if I found out that Rose was - that she should have been Head Girl, if I found proof . . . should I tell her?”
I stared at him. “Do you have proof?” I asked, taking a step closer, but he wouldn’t answer.
“Should I tell her?” he repeated, more urgently.
“No,” I said with as much finality as I could muster. It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. His jaw tightened and he looked away, with a reckless look that I had seen many times on Rose’s face, but never before on his, and I knew what it meant. “Scorpius, no,” I said again, stressing my reply, fearful of what he might do. “She won’t want to know.”
“Won’t want to know the truth?” he demanded. “Someone else has been given something that she earned! The Rose I know would want to hear about it!”
“The Rose you know is immature, impulsive, and competitive!” I shot back at him. “She’s changed, she’s worked hard to change, and she’s grown! She’s not the girl you knew anymore, and you don’t have the right to take that away from her.”
His jaw tightened even further, and he was silent for a long time. When he spoke, it was the least charitable thing I’d ever heard him say. “Lila Stonebrook?” he whispered. “A better choice for Head Girl? Do you honestly believe that?”
“She’s getting better,” I said, putting up a feeble defense, but Scorpius overrode me.
“She’s timid,” he said angrily, “and she lets people walk all over her. It wasn’t supposed to be this way! It was supposed to be me and Rose, accomplishing more from these positions than anyone has in the last twenty years by using that rivalry we’ve always had to push each other and -” He broke off abruptly, coloring, realizing he’d said too much. A cold, burning anger ignited in the pit of my stomach as his words registered. “Hugo,” he said, almost desperately, “I-”
“You had better not be about to tell me that when my sister stood in front of you a year ago and you called her out in front of the entire Tower, you lied to her.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I knew the rivalry existed. I didn’t know the extent to which she took it. I thought she used it the same way I did - an extra incentive! We accomplished more pushing each other than we ever would have -”
“Stop, please,” I interrupted forcefully. “I’m going outside. Please don’t talk about this to anyone else. If you don’t have confidence in Lila, how is anyone else supposed to?” And I left.
It was a retreat, I know it. But I couldn’t handle the conversation any longer. Scorpius had shown a side that I had never expected to see, and it had struck me in the Tower how much more like Rose he truly was than I had ever before believed.
~~~
It was the kind of rainy day that Rose hates the most the day everything came to a head. The sky was ugly, black and ominous, and there was violent wind but no rain, with a tension in the air that set everyone’s teeth on edge. It was the kind of tension that only a really massive storm could release, but though the sky and the air promised the storm, it didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come. I can remember quite clearly Rose standing in our meadow on a day like this so long ago, staring up at the sky and finally shouting, “Come on!” in a doomed-to-failure effort to release some of that tension.
It was the kind of day that affected everyone, whether they were aware of why or not. Everyone was irritable, tense, set on edge. I had planned to spend the whole weekend revising, as the OWLs were growing ever closer, but even I reached a point where I had to slam my schoolbooks shut and escape the confines of a Tower that had suddenly grown cramped and stuffy.
Whenever I truly needed to be alone at school, needed a solitude beyond what a shadowy blue corner of my Common Room or the library could afford, I headed for the first floor. Quite by accident when I was a second year, I had discovered that the windows of the northwest passage had deep sills, wide enough to sit on, and were entirely covered by thick, heavy curtains. I had smuggled some cushions to one such alcove, and it had quickly become my favorite reading space. It was my own private retreat, and in four years, I’d never been disturbed or discovered. Not even Rose knew exactly where it was, though she had a general idea.
That was where I went on this day, a book in hand, hoping that some time to myself would help dispel the foul mood the castle had sunken into. I tried to read, to lose myself in a book the way I had done countless times over my life, but I kept getting distracted - by OWLs, by the revising I really ought to have been doing, by the impending storm outside, by the conversation I’d had with Scorpius little more than a week before. I couldn’t concentrate or focus, and so when I heard a very soft, “Hugh? Are you there?” coming from the corridor, I very nearly pulled back the curtains to answer my sister. But a second voice stopped me before I could even reveal my presence.
“Rose! There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Scorpius sounded breathless, and my stomach, inexplicably, plunged. I froze, undiscovered, praying he wasn’t about to do what I was sure he was.
“Looking for me?” Rose repeated warily, and I could see why. She had Scorpius had had precious little contact that year. For all his constant watching, he had avoided her actual presence equally consistently. “Why?”
“I have something I have to tell you,” he said, still breathless. “Something you need to know.” I chanced a peek past the heavy curtains just in time to see Rose cross her arms. She was tense and uncomfortable, that was plain, and I knew the day was getting to her. Scorpius, if he was there for the reason I thought, couldn’t have picked a worse time.
“What?” she asked carefully.
“You should have been Head Girl.” The words came out in a rush, and they froze Rose just as they froze me. She recovered faster.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said, and she pushed past him. But he reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her.
“No, you have to listen!” he almost snapped, and it was the least collected I’d ever heard him. “I’ve been trying to figure this out for months, how on earth you could have been passed up, why anyone would think Lila Stonebrook was a better choice, and now I’ve just come from the Headmistress, and she told me, Rose! You were everyone’s first choice for Head Girl, just like I was everyone’s first choice for Head Boy, but nobody wanted us to serve together, so they had to skip over one of us! But it should have been you, Rose, all along.”
The silence in the corridor after he’d finished speaking was as heavy and oppressive as the silence outside, and the tension was coiled just as tightly, and as sure as I knew the thunder and rain were coming, I knew that Scorpius had just unleashed a tempest, even if he didn’t realize it yet.
After a few seconds’ stunned silence, Rose wrenched her arm from his grasp and said, in a voice full of bewilderment and anger, “Why would you tell me that?”
“Rose- ” He sounded as bewildered as she did, as if he couldn’t imagine why this wasn’t welcome news, and I fumed at him from behind my curtain.
“No, what possible reason could you have for telling me that?” she demanded, overriding him in a wave of hurt, anguished fury. “I don’t want to know that! Damn it, Scorpius!” I chanced another peek and looked at Scorpius’ face - he was utterly shocked by her reaction, even though I had told him what would come of this.
“Rose, listen-”
“No, you listen!” she said furiously, rounding on him. As angry as she’d been when she’d confronted him in Ravenclaw Tower, he’d never seen her unleash her temper like this. “I have spent the last eight months coming to terms with the fact that Lila was chosen over me. I have spent the last eight months examining every short-coming, every weakness, every flaw in myself that makes her a better leader by comparison. And sure, part of me wondered, believe me, Scorpius, but I have always trusted that there was a wisdom behind the choice that I couldn’t see, and so I could help her! I could grow and change and stand behind her and give her the confidence she needed. But now? Damn it, how am I supposed to look her in the face after this? How am I supposed to give her my unflinching support now, knowing I should be standing in her place? God, I hate you! Why would you tell me this?”
His jaw tightened at that, and his own temper flared to life. “Hate me?” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes!” Rose shouted.
“Because I dared to come tell you the truth?”
“Yes!”
“How dare you hate me for that!”
“Because I didn’t want to know!” Rose screamed at him. “God, you stupid Ravenclaw, you didn’t give me truth, you gave me a fact, the truth is something far bigger than you seem capable of comprehending!”
“And what is the truth?” Scorpius demanded angrily.
“That I changed because of you!” she yelled, and I shrank into my window. I wanted to disappear, I wanted them to disappear, I wanted anything that would enable me to escape, to not have to sit here and hear this. Those words shifted the tide of the shouting match - those words made it intimate, made it private, made it not something that I should be present for. But short of revealing myself, there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to reveal myself.
“You called me out in front of all those people and laid out my faults!” Rose shouted. “You’re the one who told me to change - you don’t have the right to complain about what those changes are, and you don’t have the right to come down here and tell me - I have spent a year with your voice in my head, your voice keeping me in check, and you put it there! I never asked you to meddle in my life!”
“Because I have to meddle in your life!” Scorpius shouted in return.
“Why?”
“Because that’s the only way I can be part of it! You won’t let me in!”
In the silence that followed, I swear I could hear Rose’s shocked bewilderment. For her, this was coming out of the blue. The only reason it wasn’t for me was because I’d been watching him because of that whisper from my uncle so long ago. But Rose had had no idea, and even now, when I chanced a look at her face from behind the curtain, she looked like she was still uncertain whether she’d heard what she thought she’d heard between his words.
I saw more than heard her whispered, “What?” and then Scorpius was looking strained, chagrined, like he’d said too much, but perhaps he felt he’d gone too far to stop now, and so, much to my dismay, he continued to speak.
“You’re impossible,” he said breathlessly. “Like a puzzle I can’t solve. I’ve been trying for seven years. And just when I thought I had it all figured out, you went and changed the rules on me! This year was supposed to be about putting the last pieces together, you were supposed to be Head Girl so I’d have a chance to show you what we could do when you aren’t fighting me!” I pressed myself as far back into the alcove as I could, wishing I could melt into the very stone, but at the same time, mortifying as it was to be trapped, overhearing them, I couldn’t stop listening. “And instead it’s Lila, and all I can think about is how you won’t even look at me anymore, and I-”
He broke off abruptly, and it caught my attention because there was no reason for it that I could see. I waited for him to speak again, to overcome whatever hitch had stopped him, but there was nothing, and so finally, I pushed back the curtain just the slightest.
I froze in horror when I saw why he had stopped speaking, and my first thought was, She’s going to slap him, because Scorpius Malfoy was kissing my sister, and I didn’t think anything could be quite as shocking as that until Scorpius wrenched himself away, looking startled, and I realized that he hadn’t kissed Rose - she had kissed him.
“What - what are you doing?” he demanded in a wary voice, and Rose colored a bright Weasley red.
“I thought - you said - I thought that’s what you wanted,” she stammered, and suddenly my face was as bright as hers, and I dropped the curtain like it burned. All I could think about was how I shouldn’t be there, I shouldn’t be hearing everything they were about to say. But I did.
“I - do you have feelings for me?” He asked it like he couldn’t imagine it was true.
“I don’t know,” Rose said, sounding very young. “I think . . . I think I might.”
“You think you might.” He repeated it slowly, carefully, but from the sound of his voice, nothing she’d said could have been worse. There was a pause then, “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Wait, what?” Rose demanded then, sounding a bit more like her old self.
“Rose, I have spent the last four years trying to figure out how to fit myself into your life,” Scorpius admitted then, and I have always wondered if Rose went as red as I did at that. “And now, you think you might have feelings for me? No. I’m not going to be another Weasley fling. This isn’t something you’ve been longing for. This is something that has just now occurred to you as something that might be worthwhile in some way. And I’m sorry. But that’s not good enough.”
“Not good enough?” Rose repeated, and there was definitely a spark of her usual temper in the words. “Not good enough? My god, what is wrong with you? You tell me I’m too competitive, then turn around three months later and blame me for not fighting Lila being named Head Girl over me! You call me out a year ago for being immature and pathetic, then take it as a personal affront when I change! And now, you admit that you’ve, I don’t even know, been in love with me for four years, but the minute I tell you I might return those feelings, it’s suddenly not good enough?”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Scorpius said, his voice distraught. “Hugo was right-”
“Hugo?” Rose questioned immediately, a note of betrayal in her voice that went straight to my heart like a barb.
“I’m sorry,” Scorpius said. “This was a mistake. All of it.” And I heard his footsteps moving away down the corridor, first slowly, then faster and faster, and I knew he was leaving Rose behind as quickly as possible.
The silence was deafening, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the sound of my pounding heart, and I felt almost sick. Not just with the intimacy of what I’d overheard - though believe me, that was there, too - but with the thought of the blame I knew Rose was trying not to put on me that even I couldn’t decide if I deserved or not.
And then, out of the silence, I heard a sound that only added to the conflict in my head - a sob. Followed by another, and another, and another in quick succession. My sister, my best friend, was sobbing mere feet away from me in utter heartbreak, and I was too much of a coward to push back the curtain and go to her. All I could do was sit there and listen as my big sister cried alone, overwhelmed by the loss of something she’d never known she was missing until she gained it for one all-too-brief moment.
And then, another sound. Rain. It came in driving, pounding sheets, and it almost masked the sound of Rose’s running footsteps. I knew where she was going. She was running for the nearest exit, running to fling herself into the deluge. I sat for a long time after she left, making up my mind what to do next. My face burned with the memory of all I’d witnessed and overheard. If I followed Rose, I’d have to make a choice when I reached her - pretend not to notice her pain and so clearly reveal that I’d been in the hall, or ask what was wrong and face reliving everything that had just happened.
And so, for the first time in my life, I consciously made the choice not to follow her.
I returned to Ravenclaw Tower and made myself miserable watching Rose far below me. There was no dance, not this time, nor was she spread out and welcoming the heavens. Instead, she was on her knees before the heavens, eyes upturned, begging the sky for lighting, for the release that would come with the storm. But just like her little brother, it never came.
When I went down to dinner, Rose was noticeably absent, and the only empty spot was across from a withdrawn and somber Scorpius. I took my seat and did not meet his eyes, but I could feel my face burning all the same.
We ate in silence, despite the chatter around us, but the tension that had been building all day was still there, the sky still black above us, the promised storm still nowhere in sight.
And then, suddenly, with a massive crash that startled us all, the doors to the Great Hall were flung open, and there stood Rose, soaking wet, with a fierce and determined look on her face. She barely scanned the room before her eyes lit on Scorpius, and she strode straight to him, everyone in the Hall following her every move.
She stood behind him for a long moment while everyone held their breath, waiting to see what on earth would come of this. And then Rose, in front of the entire school and staff, leaned swiftly down and kissed him, long and hard.
I don’t know if the Hall actually went silent at that or if the ringing in my ears just drowned out all the sound, but the next thing I knew, Rose was straightening, leaving Scorpius looking dazed, shocked, and wary, and then she was speaking, not loudly enough for everyone to hear, but loudly enough that I could hear, much to my dismay.
“Just because I didn’t recognize that this was what I wanted two days ago doesn’t mean it’s any less meaningful or substantial,” she said, and Scorpius and I alone knew what she was talking about. “I may not have been able to name it like you could, but it’s always been there. You are one of the smartest people I know, Scorpius. Have you really not understood that I spent six years doing everything in my power to ensure that you noticed me? Hugo can point you in the right direction on that, too.”
“Hugo would just as soon be left out of this, actually,” I said to my plate, trying to hide behind my hand, but Rose went on as if she hadn’t heard me.
“Look, I am selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best. And Scorpius, you are the only person besides Hugo I have ever known who can handle me at my worst. I am asking you, begging you, to let me show you that I am more than just my flaws. Please, let me prove that I want this as much as you do.”
There was a long, awkward silence, and then Scorpius stood, slowly, until he was on her level. And then, still in front of the entire school, he made his decision, took her face in his hands, and kissed her soundly. Scorpius Malfoy and my sister all but made out in the middle of dinner, completely oblivious to the world around them until an angry Headmistress stormed down the center aisle of the Great Hall and demanded to know what they thought they were doing.
“Sorry, Professor,” Scorpius said in a dazed sort of voice, not looking away from Rose. “I got caught up in the moment.”
And at that precise moment, I kid you not, lighting flashed in a brilliant web across the sky and thunder crashed down around us. Rose held out her hand to Scorpius, a soft smile playing about her lips. “Come with me,” she said.
“Where?” he asked.
“Come dance in the rain.”
And he did. And I watched them from a window, the tiniest pang of loss and sadness striking me. Because for the first time, I had faded into the background for Rose. For the first time, when she looked to someone to lead them out into a storm, it hadn’t been me.
I was about to turn and walk away and leave them to their dance when a small ghostly starling flew up and landed on my shoulder and said in my sister’s voice, “Don’t think I don’t see you lurking in the shadows. Stop trying to fade away and come dance with us, Hugh.”
And with a smile, I did. I guess some things don’t change.
~~~
It was storming fit to beat the band the day my sister married Scorpius Malfoy. This one I can attest to personally, as I was standing there beside them as their witness.
There were those who claimed the storm was a bad omen, proof that this union was doomed from them start, but no one listened to them because everyone who was there could see the glee in the eyes of the bride, that one of the most important days of her life should be graced with her favorite kind of weather. And when she and the groom ran out into the middle of the downpour after the ceremony, without a thought to their finery, I was right there beside them while the rest of the guests huddled under awnings to keep out of the wet.
It was a different kind of dance we did that day, and Rose and I both knew it. The look in her eyes was the same one she’d had on the day before she’d left for Hogwarts. “Things are gonna change, you know,” she said with some regret, but I just nodded.
“I know,” I told her. “They can’t not.”
“Promise me something,” she said then, just as she had before.
“That I’ll keep dancing in the rain?” I finished, and she smiled. I nodded. “I will.”
She hugged me then, and into my ear said, “You were there that day, weren’t you? Behind one of the curtains.” I could no more lie to her in that moment than ever before.
“Yes,” I admitted. She sighed.
“I’m sorry,” she told me, but I shrugged it off.
“It’s my lot,” I told her. “And I wouldn’t have traded the years I’ve spent as your shadow for anything in the world.”
“Not anymore, though, right?” she said with mock scolding, and I smiled.
“Not anymore,” I promised, and then I backed away toward the tent to let them have their wedding dance in the rain.
“I really wish someone had taken me up on that bet,” said a voice by my elbow, and I looked down in time to see my uncle’s portrait shoving Rose and Scorpius out of their own wedding photo.
“You’re not supposed to be able to be here, you know,” I commented, and my uncle just gave me a withering look.
“I told you, I’m infused with the essence of Fred Weasley,” he said with disdain. “You didn’t really expect me to follow the rules of portraiture, did you?”
“No,” I agreed cheerfully.
“So,” he said, looking out at the bride and groom. “You asked me once why there was bad blood between us and the Malfoys. Care to tell me now why there no longer is?”
“Well,” I said, my eyes not leaving my sister and her husband, “it started with a storm.”
Fin
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Poll We Stand and Face the Storm
Author: realmer06
Prompt: "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best- Marilyn Monroe"
Summary: With gray eyes the color of thunderclouds and a temper to match her hair, Rose Weasley could be a whirlwind when infuriated. It was on these occasions that her shy little brother came into his own, for he would march straight into that whirlwind when no one else would go near, and turn his sister once more into a rational human being. He learned early on when to calm her and when to let her rage; she, on the other side, knew when to pull him forward and when to let him fade. They understood one another perfectly, and there were never any secrets between them. That was half the problem. Because being the eye of Rose’s storm meant Hugo got trapped in the middle of far more than he ever wanted to. The story of Rose and Scorpius from someone who has, most unfortunately, been present for most of the highlights.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some mild language
Word Count: (if applicable) overall, ~12,500
A/N:Hugo Weasley has long fascinated me, because he seems to disappear into the fandom's background, overshadowed always by his big sister. And so I started thinking, what if that's the way he was in "real" life? When I saw the prompt above, this idea was given form and direction, and I have so loved crafting the relationship of Rose and Scorpius as seen by an outside observer. Thanks so much to M, my faithful beta, and enjoy!
It was pouring rain the day the first time I really lost my temper with Scorpius.
It was the first rain of the spring, the first rain warm enough to go out and get soaked in, and I knew Rose would already be outside. Winter was a hard time for her, because dancing in the snow is not the same experience as dancing in the rain, and Madame Pomfrey has promised she will keep Rose on permanent castle arrest if she risks her health by dancing in the rare winter rains the way she did her first year.
This winter had been particularly hard on her as well, because out in the rain is the one time when Rose can truly let her barriers down, when her emotions don’t show on her face because the wetness and the redness come from the sky as much as from within. Her seventh year was harder for her than she had ever imagined it being, and not because of her NEWTs. It was hard to keep smiling and supporting Lila, who was intimidated by Scorpius’ new gruff demeanor that, Lila wasn’t wrong, he only turned on her. It certainly didn’t help that Lila had never had the most confidence in the world, anyway. She kept coming to Rose for help, which also wasn’t making the situation any easier.
“There are days,” she told me one cold day in February as we sat in the library and watched a cold misty rain trickle down outside, “when I look at Lila and have the awful thought, ‘This was really the better choice?’ And then I hate myself for thinking it because it doesn’t help Lila, and she is getting better. And on her good days, on my good days, I know she was the better choice.”
Yes, the winter had been hard, and as the days turned warmer, Rose kept a careful watch on the temperature, and the moment it crept above Madame Pomfrey’s limit, she was out the front doors and under Ravenclaw Tower, beckoning me down. With a smile, I finished the section of the essay I was working on and obliged her.
“Hugo?” Scorpius called out to me as I passed him in the Common Room. He was seated in a deep window seat, and I had the unshakeable feeling that he’d been watching Rose only moments before.
“Yes?” I asked. He looked away, steeling himself for whatever he was about to say, and then he turned back to me and spoke.
“I need your advice on something,” he said, his gaze drifting back to the window. I looked at him expectantly. “Hugo, if I - discovered something, if I found out that Rose was - that she should have been Head Girl, if I found proof . . . should I tell her?”
I stared at him. “Do you have proof?” I asked, taking a step closer, but he wouldn’t answer.
“Should I tell her?” he repeated, more urgently.
“No,” I said with as much finality as I could muster. It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. His jaw tightened and he looked away, with a reckless look that I had seen many times on Rose’s face, but never before on his, and I knew what it meant. “Scorpius, no,” I said again, stressing my reply, fearful of what he might do. “She won’t want to know.”
“Won’t want to know the truth?” he demanded. “Someone else has been given something that she earned! The Rose I know would want to hear about it!”
“The Rose you know is immature, impulsive, and competitive!” I shot back at him. “She’s changed, she’s worked hard to change, and she’s grown! She’s not the girl you knew anymore, and you don’t have the right to take that away from her.”
His jaw tightened even further, and he was silent for a long time. When he spoke, it was the least charitable thing I’d ever heard him say. “Lila Stonebrook?” he whispered. “A better choice for Head Girl? Do you honestly believe that?”
“She’s getting better,” I said, putting up a feeble defense, but Scorpius overrode me.
“She’s timid,” he said angrily, “and she lets people walk all over her. It wasn’t supposed to be this way! It was supposed to be me and Rose, accomplishing more from these positions than anyone has in the last twenty years by using that rivalry we’ve always had to push each other and -” He broke off abruptly, coloring, realizing he’d said too much. A cold, burning anger ignited in the pit of my stomach as his words registered. “Hugo,” he said, almost desperately, “I-”
“You had better not be about to tell me that when my sister stood in front of you a year ago and you called her out in front of the entire Tower, you lied to her.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I knew the rivalry existed. I didn’t know the extent to which she took it. I thought she used it the same way I did - an extra incentive! We accomplished more pushing each other than we ever would have -”
“Stop, please,” I interrupted forcefully. “I’m going outside. Please don’t talk about this to anyone else. If you don’t have confidence in Lila, how is anyone else supposed to?” And I left.
It was a retreat, I know it. But I couldn’t handle the conversation any longer. Scorpius had shown a side that I had never expected to see, and it had struck me in the Tower how much more like Rose he truly was than I had ever before believed.
~~~
It was the kind of rainy day that Rose hates the most the day everything came to a head. The sky was ugly, black and ominous, and there was violent wind but no rain, with a tension in the air that set everyone’s teeth on edge. It was the kind of tension that only a really massive storm could release, but though the sky and the air promised the storm, it didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come. I can remember quite clearly Rose standing in our meadow on a day like this so long ago, staring up at the sky and finally shouting, “Come on!” in a doomed-to-failure effort to release some of that tension.
It was the kind of day that affected everyone, whether they were aware of why or not. Everyone was irritable, tense, set on edge. I had planned to spend the whole weekend revising, as the OWLs were growing ever closer, but even I reached a point where I had to slam my schoolbooks shut and escape the confines of a Tower that had suddenly grown cramped and stuffy.
Whenever I truly needed to be alone at school, needed a solitude beyond what a shadowy blue corner of my Common Room or the library could afford, I headed for the first floor. Quite by accident when I was a second year, I had discovered that the windows of the northwest passage had deep sills, wide enough to sit on, and were entirely covered by thick, heavy curtains. I had smuggled some cushions to one such alcove, and it had quickly become my favorite reading space. It was my own private retreat, and in four years, I’d never been disturbed or discovered. Not even Rose knew exactly where it was, though she had a general idea.
That was where I went on this day, a book in hand, hoping that some time to myself would help dispel the foul mood the castle had sunken into. I tried to read, to lose myself in a book the way I had done countless times over my life, but I kept getting distracted - by OWLs, by the revising I really ought to have been doing, by the impending storm outside, by the conversation I’d had with Scorpius little more than a week before. I couldn’t concentrate or focus, and so when I heard a very soft, “Hugh? Are you there?” coming from the corridor, I very nearly pulled back the curtains to answer my sister. But a second voice stopped me before I could even reveal my presence.
“Rose! There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Scorpius sounded breathless, and my stomach, inexplicably, plunged. I froze, undiscovered, praying he wasn’t about to do what I was sure he was.
“Looking for me?” Rose repeated warily, and I could see why. She had Scorpius had had precious little contact that year. For all his constant watching, he had avoided her actual presence equally consistently. “Why?”
“I have something I have to tell you,” he said, still breathless. “Something you need to know.” I chanced a peek past the heavy curtains just in time to see Rose cross her arms. She was tense and uncomfortable, that was plain, and I knew the day was getting to her. Scorpius, if he was there for the reason I thought, couldn’t have picked a worse time.
“What?” she asked carefully.
“You should have been Head Girl.” The words came out in a rush, and they froze Rose just as they froze me. She recovered faster.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said, and she pushed past him. But he reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her.
“No, you have to listen!” he almost snapped, and it was the least collected I’d ever heard him. “I’ve been trying to figure this out for months, how on earth you could have been passed up, why anyone would think Lila Stonebrook was a better choice, and now I’ve just come from the Headmistress, and she told me, Rose! You were everyone’s first choice for Head Girl, just like I was everyone’s first choice for Head Boy, but nobody wanted us to serve together, so they had to skip over one of us! But it should have been you, Rose, all along.”
The silence in the corridor after he’d finished speaking was as heavy and oppressive as the silence outside, and the tension was coiled just as tightly, and as sure as I knew the thunder and rain were coming, I knew that Scorpius had just unleashed a tempest, even if he didn’t realize it yet.
After a few seconds’ stunned silence, Rose wrenched her arm from his grasp and said, in a voice full of bewilderment and anger, “Why would you tell me that?”
“Rose- ” He sounded as bewildered as she did, as if he couldn’t imagine why this wasn’t welcome news, and I fumed at him from behind my curtain.
“No, what possible reason could you have for telling me that?” she demanded, overriding him in a wave of hurt, anguished fury. “I don’t want to know that! Damn it, Scorpius!” I chanced another peek and looked at Scorpius’ face - he was utterly shocked by her reaction, even though I had told him what would come of this.
“Rose, listen-”
“No, you listen!” she said furiously, rounding on him. As angry as she’d been when she’d confronted him in Ravenclaw Tower, he’d never seen her unleash her temper like this. “I have spent the last eight months coming to terms with the fact that Lila was chosen over me. I have spent the last eight months examining every short-coming, every weakness, every flaw in myself that makes her a better leader by comparison. And sure, part of me wondered, believe me, Scorpius, but I have always trusted that there was a wisdom behind the choice that I couldn’t see, and so I could help her! I could grow and change and stand behind her and give her the confidence she needed. But now? Damn it, how am I supposed to look her in the face after this? How am I supposed to give her my unflinching support now, knowing I should be standing in her place? God, I hate you! Why would you tell me this?”
His jaw tightened at that, and his own temper flared to life. “Hate me?” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes!” Rose shouted.
“Because I dared to come tell you the truth?”
“Yes!”
“How dare you hate me for that!”
“Because I didn’t want to know!” Rose screamed at him. “God, you stupid Ravenclaw, you didn’t give me truth, you gave me a fact, the truth is something far bigger than you seem capable of comprehending!”
“And what is the truth?” Scorpius demanded angrily.
“That I changed because of you!” she yelled, and I shrank into my window. I wanted to disappear, I wanted them to disappear, I wanted anything that would enable me to escape, to not have to sit here and hear this. Those words shifted the tide of the shouting match - those words made it intimate, made it private, made it not something that I should be present for. But short of revealing myself, there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to reveal myself.
“You called me out in front of all those people and laid out my faults!” Rose shouted. “You’re the one who told me to change - you don’t have the right to complain about what those changes are, and you don’t have the right to come down here and tell me - I have spent a year with your voice in my head, your voice keeping me in check, and you put it there! I never asked you to meddle in my life!”
“Because I have to meddle in your life!” Scorpius shouted in return.
“Why?”
“Because that’s the only way I can be part of it! You won’t let me in!”
In the silence that followed, I swear I could hear Rose’s shocked bewilderment. For her, this was coming out of the blue. The only reason it wasn’t for me was because I’d been watching him because of that whisper from my uncle so long ago. But Rose had had no idea, and even now, when I chanced a look at her face from behind the curtain, she looked like she was still uncertain whether she’d heard what she thought she’d heard between his words.
I saw more than heard her whispered, “What?” and then Scorpius was looking strained, chagrined, like he’d said too much, but perhaps he felt he’d gone too far to stop now, and so, much to my dismay, he continued to speak.
“You’re impossible,” he said breathlessly. “Like a puzzle I can’t solve. I’ve been trying for seven years. And just when I thought I had it all figured out, you went and changed the rules on me! This year was supposed to be about putting the last pieces together, you were supposed to be Head Girl so I’d have a chance to show you what we could do when you aren’t fighting me!” I pressed myself as far back into the alcove as I could, wishing I could melt into the very stone, but at the same time, mortifying as it was to be trapped, overhearing them, I couldn’t stop listening. “And instead it’s Lila, and all I can think about is how you won’t even look at me anymore, and I-”
He broke off abruptly, and it caught my attention because there was no reason for it that I could see. I waited for him to speak again, to overcome whatever hitch had stopped him, but there was nothing, and so finally, I pushed back the curtain just the slightest.
I froze in horror when I saw why he had stopped speaking, and my first thought was, She’s going to slap him, because Scorpius Malfoy was kissing my sister, and I didn’t think anything could be quite as shocking as that until Scorpius wrenched himself away, looking startled, and I realized that he hadn’t kissed Rose - she had kissed him.
“What - what are you doing?” he demanded in a wary voice, and Rose colored a bright Weasley red.
“I thought - you said - I thought that’s what you wanted,” she stammered, and suddenly my face was as bright as hers, and I dropped the curtain like it burned. All I could think about was how I shouldn’t be there, I shouldn’t be hearing everything they were about to say. But I did.
“I - do you have feelings for me?” He asked it like he couldn’t imagine it was true.
“I don’t know,” Rose said, sounding very young. “I think . . . I think I might.”
“You think you might.” He repeated it slowly, carefully, but from the sound of his voice, nothing she’d said could have been worse. There was a pause then, “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Wait, what?” Rose demanded then, sounding a bit more like her old self.
“Rose, I have spent the last four years trying to figure out how to fit myself into your life,” Scorpius admitted then, and I have always wondered if Rose went as red as I did at that. “And now, you think you might have feelings for me? No. I’m not going to be another Weasley fling. This isn’t something you’ve been longing for. This is something that has just now occurred to you as something that might be worthwhile in some way. And I’m sorry. But that’s not good enough.”
“Not good enough?” Rose repeated, and there was definitely a spark of her usual temper in the words. “Not good enough? My god, what is wrong with you? You tell me I’m too competitive, then turn around three months later and blame me for not fighting Lila being named Head Girl over me! You call me out a year ago for being immature and pathetic, then take it as a personal affront when I change! And now, you admit that you’ve, I don’t even know, been in love with me for four years, but the minute I tell you I might return those feelings, it’s suddenly not good enough?”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Scorpius said, his voice distraught. “Hugo was right-”
“Hugo?” Rose questioned immediately, a note of betrayal in her voice that went straight to my heart like a barb.
“I’m sorry,” Scorpius said. “This was a mistake. All of it.” And I heard his footsteps moving away down the corridor, first slowly, then faster and faster, and I knew he was leaving Rose behind as quickly as possible.
The silence was deafening, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the sound of my pounding heart, and I felt almost sick. Not just with the intimacy of what I’d overheard - though believe me, that was there, too - but with the thought of the blame I knew Rose was trying not to put on me that even I couldn’t decide if I deserved or not.
And then, out of the silence, I heard a sound that only added to the conflict in my head - a sob. Followed by another, and another, and another in quick succession. My sister, my best friend, was sobbing mere feet away from me in utter heartbreak, and I was too much of a coward to push back the curtain and go to her. All I could do was sit there and listen as my big sister cried alone, overwhelmed by the loss of something she’d never known she was missing until she gained it for one all-too-brief moment.
And then, another sound. Rain. It came in driving, pounding sheets, and it almost masked the sound of Rose’s running footsteps. I knew where she was going. She was running for the nearest exit, running to fling herself into the deluge. I sat for a long time after she left, making up my mind what to do next. My face burned with the memory of all I’d witnessed and overheard. If I followed Rose, I’d have to make a choice when I reached her - pretend not to notice her pain and so clearly reveal that I’d been in the hall, or ask what was wrong and face reliving everything that had just happened.
And so, for the first time in my life, I consciously made the choice not to follow her.
I returned to Ravenclaw Tower and made myself miserable watching Rose far below me. There was no dance, not this time, nor was she spread out and welcoming the heavens. Instead, she was on her knees before the heavens, eyes upturned, begging the sky for lighting, for the release that would come with the storm. But just like her little brother, it never came.
When I went down to dinner, Rose was noticeably absent, and the only empty spot was across from a withdrawn and somber Scorpius. I took my seat and did not meet his eyes, but I could feel my face burning all the same.
We ate in silence, despite the chatter around us, but the tension that had been building all day was still there, the sky still black above us, the promised storm still nowhere in sight.
And then, suddenly, with a massive crash that startled us all, the doors to the Great Hall were flung open, and there stood Rose, soaking wet, with a fierce and determined look on her face. She barely scanned the room before her eyes lit on Scorpius, and she strode straight to him, everyone in the Hall following her every move.
She stood behind him for a long moment while everyone held their breath, waiting to see what on earth would come of this. And then Rose, in front of the entire school and staff, leaned swiftly down and kissed him, long and hard.
I don’t know if the Hall actually went silent at that or if the ringing in my ears just drowned out all the sound, but the next thing I knew, Rose was straightening, leaving Scorpius looking dazed, shocked, and wary, and then she was speaking, not loudly enough for everyone to hear, but loudly enough that I could hear, much to my dismay.
“Just because I didn’t recognize that this was what I wanted two days ago doesn’t mean it’s any less meaningful or substantial,” she said, and Scorpius and I alone knew what she was talking about. “I may not have been able to name it like you could, but it’s always been there. You are one of the smartest people I know, Scorpius. Have you really not understood that I spent six years doing everything in my power to ensure that you noticed me? Hugo can point you in the right direction on that, too.”
“Hugo would just as soon be left out of this, actually,” I said to my plate, trying to hide behind my hand, but Rose went on as if she hadn’t heard me.
“Look, I am selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best. And Scorpius, you are the only person besides Hugo I have ever known who can handle me at my worst. I am asking you, begging you, to let me show you that I am more than just my flaws. Please, let me prove that I want this as much as you do.”
There was a long, awkward silence, and then Scorpius stood, slowly, until he was on her level. And then, still in front of the entire school, he made his decision, took her face in his hands, and kissed her soundly. Scorpius Malfoy and my sister all but made out in the middle of dinner, completely oblivious to the world around them until an angry Headmistress stormed down the center aisle of the Great Hall and demanded to know what they thought they were doing.
“Sorry, Professor,” Scorpius said in a dazed sort of voice, not looking away from Rose. “I got caught up in the moment.”
And at that precise moment, I kid you not, lighting flashed in a brilliant web across the sky and thunder crashed down around us. Rose held out her hand to Scorpius, a soft smile playing about her lips. “Come with me,” she said.
“Where?” he asked.
“Come dance in the rain.”
And he did. And I watched them from a window, the tiniest pang of loss and sadness striking me. Because for the first time, I had faded into the background for Rose. For the first time, when she looked to someone to lead them out into a storm, it hadn’t been me.
I was about to turn and walk away and leave them to their dance when a small ghostly starling flew up and landed on my shoulder and said in my sister’s voice, “Don’t think I don’t see you lurking in the shadows. Stop trying to fade away and come dance with us, Hugh.”
And with a smile, I did. I guess some things don’t change.
~~~
It was storming fit to beat the band the day my sister married Scorpius Malfoy. This one I can attest to personally, as I was standing there beside them as their witness.
There were those who claimed the storm was a bad omen, proof that this union was doomed from them start, but no one listened to them because everyone who was there could see the glee in the eyes of the bride, that one of the most important days of her life should be graced with her favorite kind of weather. And when she and the groom ran out into the middle of the downpour after the ceremony, without a thought to their finery, I was right there beside them while the rest of the guests huddled under awnings to keep out of the wet.
It was a different kind of dance we did that day, and Rose and I both knew it. The look in her eyes was the same one she’d had on the day before she’d left for Hogwarts. “Things are gonna change, you know,” she said with some regret, but I just nodded.
“I know,” I told her. “They can’t not.”
“Promise me something,” she said then, just as she had before.
“That I’ll keep dancing in the rain?” I finished, and she smiled. I nodded. “I will.”
She hugged me then, and into my ear said, “You were there that day, weren’t you? Behind one of the curtains.” I could no more lie to her in that moment than ever before.
“Yes,” I admitted. She sighed.
“I’m sorry,” she told me, but I shrugged it off.
“It’s my lot,” I told her. “And I wouldn’t have traded the years I’ve spent as your shadow for anything in the world.”
“Not anymore, though, right?” she said with mock scolding, and I smiled.
“Not anymore,” I promised, and then I backed away toward the tent to let them have their wedding dance in the rain.
“I really wish someone had taken me up on that bet,” said a voice by my elbow, and I looked down in time to see my uncle’s portrait shoving Rose and Scorpius out of their own wedding photo.
“You’re not supposed to be able to be here, you know,” I commented, and my uncle just gave me a withering look.
“I told you, I’m infused with the essence of Fred Weasley,” he said with disdain. “You didn’t really expect me to follow the rules of portraiture, did you?”
“No,” I agreed cheerfully.
“So,” he said, looking out at the bride and groom. “You asked me once why there was bad blood between us and the Malfoys. Care to tell me now why there no longer is?”
“Well,” I said, my eyes not leaving my sister and her husband, “it started with a storm.”
Fin
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