Universally Acknowledged (PG-13) (1/2)
Title: Universally Acknowledged
Author: realmer06
Prompt: "May I ask to what these questions tend?"
"Merely to the illustration of your character," said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."
"And what is your success?"
She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly." - Pride and Prejudice
Summary: Rose and Scorpius can’t seem to stop meeting each other - but what exactly is it that keeps pulling them together?
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: References to sexual activity, mild cursing
Word Count: (if applicable) ~18,500 altogether
A/N: I’m a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice, so I was so excited to write for this prompt! I hope I did the references justice, and I hope you enjoy this monster of a fic! Huge thanks, as ever, to M, my beta, who not only kept me on track with this beast, she also let me write her into the story as Shanti, the thoroughly unromantic best friend.
Universally Acknowledged or
Five Times Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy Crossed Paths
(and one time their paths converged)
I.
The field of Magical Anthropology was relatively new when Rose Weasley got to it. As a child, her Muggle grandparents had taken her to museum after museum, and whether she was fighting crowds to glimpse the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum or standing on tiptoe to peek high enough over the glass-covered counter to see Jane Austen’s hand-written first draft of Pride and Prejudice in the British Library, she came to love the feeling of being surrounded by the sheer weight of history.
Rose had loved those trips with her grandparents more than anything, and she had been dismayed to discover that the Wizarding world had no equivalent, no central place open to the public to hold all their history. It seemed like a tremendous oversight to her eight-year-old mind, and by the time she’d finished at Hogwarts, that had hardly changed. So she’d done some research and discovered a little-known division of the Ministry that had formed out of the end of the Last Great War, dedicated to recovering and uncovering magical heritage all over the world. The brand new department was responsible for research expeditions to all parts of the earth. Rose had signed on in an instant.
And four years later, at the age of twenty-two, she gleefully received a crate of scrolls that had been uncovered at a dig near Stonehenge, and her excitement was like nothing so much as a child on Christmas morning.
“Grabby much?” her co-worker and good friend Shanti asked with a laugh as she handed over the box.
“This is us, Shanti,” Rose said, her excitement barely contained. “This isn’t Aztec relics from North American or evidence of shamans in tribal Africa, this is us, our roots, right here in England, older than the Founding, older than anything we’ve ever seen, and it’s English!”
“Well, Celtic, most likely,” Rose’s supervisor Anabel said as she passed through the lab. “How’s your Runic translation?”
“Top of my class,” Rose assured her. “Can I please break the seals?”
“Make sure you perform all the -”
“- proper disarming and evaluation charms for presence of malicious intent, yes, yes. I will follow all protocol to the letter, as always.”
“Go on, then,” Anabel said with a laugh, and Rose skipped off to a private workstation. Grinning with anticipation, she broke the seal on the first scroll and began to read.
Almost an hour and a half later, Anabel and Shanti realized that Rose had been sitting without moving for the better part of all that time, frozen as she stared at the first scroll she had opened. Nothing that they said or did had any effect to pull her out of the trance - she was lost to them.
Rose was aware of nothing but the strange Runes in an ancient hand. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but sit and stare and read.
After an endless length of time which seemed like no time at all, Rose slowly became aware of speech, but as if through a long tunnel, the way conversation sounds to the almost-asleep. And what she heard, repeated periodically in a smooth and low voice that never fell silent, was her name.
“ . . . Miss Weasley, if you are able to hear and understand me, I’m going to ask you to try and let me know. Now if you can’t, that’s all right, no need to panic. I know you may not be in control of your body, but let’s just try something, okay?” The voice was male and soothing and reassuring, and it calmed her panic before it had a chance to do more than form halfway. She didn’t know who was speaking, but she trusted him.
“Miss Weasley, if you can hear and understand me, I’d like you to try and look up from that paper.” Rose tried, she did, but she couldn’t, and as she felt the grip tighten around her, the panic swelled up again, but before it could overwhelm her, the voice was back. “If you can’t,” it said, as if anticipating the panic, “it’s all right. It’s not a problem. That was a big step to ask at first; there are plenty of other things we can try.”
Another voice spoke, asking a question, but Rose couldn’t detach enough from the scroll to discern what the question was. She only heard her voice’s response.
“I don’t, no, but either she can’t hear me at all, or she can, and she just can’t respond. If it’s the first, I lose nothing by being reassuring. But if it’s the second, she’s probably frightened, as I know I would be, so being reassuring is the least I can do. Now, excuse me, please, but I do need to give her my full attention. Now, Miss Weasley,” he said, he voice becoming more distinct as he presumably turned back to her, “I don’t want you to think me forward, but calling you by a name you hear more often will likely yield better results, so I’m going to start calling you Rose. I hope that’s all right, but if not, you can tell me off just as soon as we get you free. So, Rose, here’s what I’d like us to try next. If you can move your head at all, please do so. A shake, a nod, anything.”
Rose tried, she really did, but nothing happened. However, again, just when she was on the verge of panic, the man’s voice came back in. “That’s all right, don’t worry. We’ll focus down a little more, and we’ll get there, Rose. It’s okay. How about an arm? Any part of an arm, a shoulder, an elbow? Can you move anything like that?” She could not. “That’s all right, an arm wouldn’t have been my first choice, anyway, so let’s try your hand. Even just a finger.”
Rose concentrated as hard as she could and managed to twitch one finger, just a little bit. She was immediately elated, but then worried that he hadn’t seen it.
“Okay, Rose, I saw a little bit of movement from your left pointer finger. Now, if that was you, consciously moving it, I’d like you to do it again.” She concentrated with all her might, and this time, the movement came easier, and she was able to actually lift and tap her finger. “Brilliant,” the young man said, and he sounded like he meant it. “But one more time, just to be sure, if you are in control of that finger, and are using it to communicate with me, please tap it twice.” She did, though it took all her effort to do so.
“Excellent, Rose, really excellent,” he said then, and she felt a surge of relief. “Okay, now that we can communicate, I have some simple questions to ask that will help me know how to proceed. The first, and most important - what’s holding you, does it feel malicious in any way? Do you feel threatened by it? Tap once for yes, and twice for no.”
Rose considered the question, probing carefully at the lock around her mind, then tapped her finger twice. “Okay, Rose, I saw two taps. So you are telling me that you do not feel threatened by the spell that holds you, is that correct?”
One tap.
“Well, that is marvelously good news,” he said, and Rose thought she could hear a smile in his voice. “That makes our next step much easier. Rose, I think if we can show the spell that you’re not interested in stealing the secrets of the scroll, we’ll be able to get it to let you go.”
And how exactly are we going to do that? Rose wanted to ask, but that was a bit difficult to communicate through finger taps. Luckily, whoever this mystery man was, he seemed to have a fairly good understanding of her, because he launched into an explanation almost immediately.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions. They’ll start out simple, and they’ll get more and more complicated and specific. I want you to have to really think about the answers and how to communicate them. The more you’re focusing on the answers to my questions, the less you’re focusing on the scroll. If we can detach your focus from the scroll, piece by piece, we can also pull it away from you, like . . . peeling away a sticker, there’s a good Muggle metaphor. And if we’re careful, we’ll be able to do it without leaving any of that annoying residue behind. So, tap once if you understand, twice if you don’t, and . . . oh, three times if you understood a while ago and have just been waiting for me to shut up.”
If Rose could have smiled, she would have. She tapped three times, and the man chuckled. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “I have a tendency to go on a bit.” Rose tapped once then, and won a full out laugh. “All right, then, Miss Snarky, let’s get started. Is your full name Rose Eleanor Weasley? Tap once for yes, twice for no.”
One tap.
“Are your parents Ron Weasley and Angelina Johnson-Weasley?”
Two taps.
“Are you the fifth eldest Weasley grandchild?”
Here Rose hesitated slightly, then slowly tapped twice.
“Please tap your finger once for each of your male cousins.”
James. Tap. Al. Tap. Fred. Tap. Louis. Tap. Hu- no, Rose. Not Hugo. She curled away the finger she had prematurely lifted to tap.
“Almost count your brother as a cousin there, Rose?” She knew she heard a smirk in the voice this time. Mentally making a face she usually reserved for her cousin, Rose tapped her finger three times. The man laughed. “I don’t know what three taps means in this instance, but I think I can guess.” Rose flicked her fingers at him then for further emphasis. “All right, all right,” he said, still laughing. “Moving on. In what month were you born?”
She hesitated, not sure how best to communicate the information. He jumped right on her hesitation. “Come on, Rose,” he said. “It’s not a difficult question, even if you are limited to finger taps. But I’m not telling you what to do anymore. Time to think for yourself.”
All right then! she thought, exasperated, and carefully began counting as she tapped slowly. One, two, three, four, five, six . . . seven, or no, was that eight? She froze, her finger stalled in the air, mid-tap. She felt a stirring of something in the back of her mind, and she couldn’t remember what month she was on, and she could feel the something in her mind starting to frown at her, and reach for her, and she was becoming less aware of the question she was answering, and more aware of those symbols on the parchment -
“Rose?” His voice cut through the fog. “You’ve stopped at seven. Unless July is your birth month, you need to keep going. Pick up where you left off.”
More determined than ever, she wrenched her mind away from the parchment. November, she though firmly. I was born in November. It was cold, and it was rainy, and Dad was in such a hurry to get inside that he slipped on the walk and fell and broke his wrist. And Aunt Ginny still teases him about trying to steal focus away from his daughter. And feeling further away from the ancient scroll than she had since she started reading it, she lifted her finger and tapped four more times.
“There you go. Now, what day?”
That was too much. “I am not tapping my finger 26 times!” she said fiercely, and then realized she’d spoken aloud.
“Well, then, as a reward for finding your voice, you don’t have to,” the man said. “Can you move at all, Rose? Can you lower the parchment and look away?”
“I -” She tried, she really did. “No,” she said, and her voice wavered infuriatingly as panic reared up again. She had to get free! “No, I can’t, I-!”
“It’s all right,” he said immediately, his voice soothing and calm as ever. “It’s all right, Rose. We’re making fantastic progress. The fact that you can speak at all, this soon, shows me that. So don’t worry. I got you this far, I’m going to get you the rest of the way. I promise. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she said in a shaky but far calmer voice.
“Good girl,” he said. “Now, am I right in thinking you can’t close your eyes?”
She tried, and couldn’t. “Yes,” she told him.
“Okay,” he said. “Then let me explain what I want to do. I want to get the scroll away from you, physically. But I don’t want to try and take it from you while you’re looking at it. I don’t know what would happen, and I don’t want to risk it. So I’m going to physically close your eyes first, okay? I’m going to come behind you and use my hand to shut them. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” Rose said, and then a moment later, a warm hand gently shut her eyes.
“Okay, now tell me a story.”
“What?” Rose asked, confused.
“Tell me a story,” he repeated. “A story from your childhood. Tell me . . . oh, I don’t know, the first time you read your favorite book. In as much detail as you can.”
“Okay,” Rose said, still a little confused, but she thought she understood what he was going to try and do. “Um . . . when I was seven, my grandmum, on Mum’s side, took me to the British Library. We’d had a girls’ day in Muggle London, just the two of us, and when she told me about the huge library, well, I had to see it. And they have a room there, a gallery, just full of old original manuscripts of, oh, everything, really. Shakespeare’s Quartos and DaVinci’s sketches and original sheet music written by Mozart, I think. But what I really remember is Jane Austen’s writing desk. They had it in a glass case, her desk with a pen and ink and everything, and her original, handwritten manuscript of Pride and Prejudice open on it. I was barely tall enough to see it, but I stood on tiptoe and I read as much as I could, and there was just something about the language. I hardly understood it, but it captivated me. I went home and asked Mum if we could read it, and even though I was only seven, she said yes. And it’s still one of my favorites.”
She shifted in her seat, then frowned, eyes still closed. She realized she was no longer frozen, and that she wasn’t holding anything anymore. “Can I open my eyes?” she asked.
“Hmmm?” the voice said from across the room. “Oh, yes. You should be able to.” She opened them to see a tall blonde man about her age who looked vaguely familiar rolling up the cursed scroll very carefully. When he caught her eye, he smiled. “Sorry about that. Didn’t want to interrupt.” The scroll now rolled into a tight cylinder and resealed, he handed it to a partner she hadn’t even known was in the room. “Take it straight to Davison, but tell him not to break the seal, whatever he does. Oh, and I suppose you can send the other two back in. They look about ready to burst through the door any moment.”
The other man nodded, and exited, and before Rose could express her gratitude or ask the man’s name, Shanti and Anabel were at her side, worrying over her and expressing their relief and concern in a rather exhausting way.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she tried to tell them both. “Really.”
“Is she?” Anabel asked the blonde young man.
“Oh, yes,” he said with a smile and a nod. “Miss Weasley has a very resilient mind. She’ll bounce right back from the encounter, though policy dictates she should go home for the rest of the day.”
And before Rose could say that she was fine, that she didn’t need the rest of the day off - which was a lie; she felt like crap, but she didn’t want to admit it - Anabel broke in, saying, “Well, if that’s what she needs, then that’s what will happen.”
“Rose, I’ve never seen anything so scary in all my life,” Shanti said, hugging her from the side. “You sitting there without moving like that.”
“Really, I’m fine,” she said softly, still trying to listen in on the mystery man’s conversation with Anabel.
“. . . do have a few more questions I need to ask Miss Weasley,” she managed to catch him say, “and I don’t want to disrupt your work any longer.”
“Of course,” Anabel said, and ushered Shanti out despite her adamant protests.
“I really don’t need the rest of the day off,” Rose said when the door had clicked shut, even though it was blatantly untrue, given the pounding in her head and the weakness she couldn’t shake.
“Yes, you do,” the man said with kind authority. “Even if Ministry guidelines didn’t demand it, you have a splitting headache and you’re as exhausted as you would be if you’d stayed up all night and then run a 5k.” Rose stared at him.
“How did you - ?” she asked, and he gave her a soft smile.
“Because I have some experience with this, Miss Weasley,” he said kindly. “Besides, even if you don’t need it, they do. If you don’t go home, they’ll just hover over you for the rest of the day, and you don’t seem like someone who would particularly enjoy that.” Rose grimaced, then sighed.
“They mean well,” she said, trying to defend her friends.
“I know that they do,” was his response.
“You said you had more questions for me?” she asked then, and he nodded.
“Yes. I need to know what happened before you broke the seals on the scrolls.” Rose grimaced again.
“You mean you need to know if I skirted procedure,” she said bluntly, and he smiled. “I assure you, I performed every precautionary enchantment we have. I performed them all twice. I don’t know what was in that seal, but it wasn’t anything - ” He stopped her with a raised hand.
“Miss Weasley, I believe you,” he said calmly. “I am well aware of your attention to detail, and I think I can safely say that there was nothing you could have done in the situation to avoid what happened. My questions are designed to help me further understand the nature of the spell itself and how to recognize and safeguard against it in the future. Now, are you able to recall what you read, any of it, even a little?”
His questions were incredibly detailed and specific, and she answered them as best she could. He didn’t seem let down at all when she couldn’t give a definite response; on the contrary, he seemed thrilled with even the little that she could tell him. And through the whole interview, something about him continued to nag at her. He was incredibly familiar, but she couldn’t place him, and it was driving her mad.
“Are you a curse breaker?” she asked as he started to pack up his bag. He glanced at her.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“An Auror?” she tried again.
“No,” he repeated with a slight smile this time.
“A Healer, then?”
“No, Miss Weasley,” he said, and he sounded almost apologetic, but he didn’t reveal any more information.
“Then who do you work for?” she asked, exasperated.
“The Ministry, same as you,” was all he said. “Now, then, if in the next few days, you suffer any sudden ill effects that you think are related to the incident, let your supervisor know immediately. And if you see these symbols on anything else that comes in from the dig. She’ll know how to contact us. I’m glad I could be of service to you, Miss Weasley,” he said, standing and extending his hand to her.
“Miss Weasley?” she repeated, taking his hand and shaking it. “You called me Rose before.”
“Rose,” he said with a smile and a nod.
“And now you have me at a disadvantage,” she said, throwing caution to the wind because she had to know who he was. “Because you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
The look he gave her then was very strange. His eyes narrowed, though they never lost their gleam of amusement. She was struck with the sudden thought that he saw the who world as one cosmic joke no one but he had been let in on. “Really,” he said, interest lining his voice. “You don’t know who I am.” It was not quite a question.
Rose grimaced and bit her lip in embarrassment. “I knew it,” she said. “I should know. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod, drawing the word out. “That you should, Rose Weasley.” She wracked her brain, she really did, but it wasn’t there.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “really, I feel like an idiot. You look so familiar, but I just can’t place you, and I’m digging myself deeper into this hole with every word, aren’t I?”
The mystery man nodded, but it was clear he was enjoying himself. Rose took a deep breath and screwed up her face. “Give me a hint,” she begged.
“Well, we went to school together for seven years,” he said then. “We weren’t in the same house, but we were in the same year, and we shared three N.E.W.T. classes, and those aren’t exactly large.”
It hit her all of a sudden, and now she really did feel like an idiot.
“Scorpius Malfoy,” she said with a groan.
“There we are,” he said with a grin.
“Oh, I’m a complete dolt,” she said, burying her face in her hands, but his amusement at it all enabled her to laugh through the embarrassment, too. “Can you ever forgive me?” she asked, and he laughed.
“Don’t mention it,” he said, all needling gone. “It’s not like we ever really interacted.”
“Still,” she insisted. “You’d think I’d have the courtesy to remember the first boy my father ever warned me away from.” His eyebrows shot up at that.
“No kidding,” he said, and she nodded.
“Yep. Train to Hogwarts, first year.”
“Didn’t waste any time, did he?” he said with a grin.
“Where a Malfoy was involved? Certainly not,” she said, and then they stood without speaking for a moment or two, just long enough for the situation to become awkward, which they both jumped to remedy at the same time.
“Anyway-” Rose said, just as Scorpius said, “I should probably-” and then they both laughed awkwardly, and Rose gestured for him to continue.
“I was saying I should probably get back to my office.”
“Probably,” Rose agreed. “And I should probably be heading home to get some rest and drink plenty of fluids, hmm?”
“Always good advice,” Scorpius said, extending his hand to her again. “Until next time, Rose.”
“Well, if I’m on top of my job, there shouldn’t be a next time, right?” She’d meant it as a joke, but for some reason, it didn’t quite come off that way. “Thank you again, Scorpius,” she said, and with one last nod, he left. Rose watched him go with an incomprehensible pang of regret that she probably wouldn’t cross paths with him again.
II.
Twenty-four-year-old Rose Weasley took a deep breath as she stepped off the transport and into the bright summer sunlight. “Smell it, Shanti,” she said with enthusiasm as her companion trudged up beside her.
“It smells the same as England,” Shanti said.
"No, it doesn't," Rose said, inhaling again. "It smells like freedom! Freedom and opportunity!" Shanti laughed.
"I think that transport knocked something loose," she said. "We're standing in a field in the middle of France. It's not like we're in Egypt or anything."
"But it's our first solo dig," Rose said, refusing to curb her enthusiasm. "We're on our own, practicing our craft, off to make discoveries heretofore undiscovered!"
"You do realize that we're working on a team of fifteen and that Anabel will be Apparating in about twice a week, right? Also, it's France."
But not even Shanti's unromantic view of the situation could dim Rose's spirits. "It's the principle of the thing, Shanti. And I know you're just as excited to be here as I am, deep down."
That won a smile out of Shanti. "Maybe," she allowed, but then she grinned at Rose, and grabbed her hand, and the two girls took off at a run. Moments later, they crested a hill and stopped short at the sight that greeted them.
Spread out below them, covering half a mile at least, was a massive, dusty, marvelous excavation site, a team of archaeologists already hard at work. Rose stood, drinking it all in, but Shanti gave her hand a tug and said, “Well, come on! We didn’t come all the way across the Channel just to look at it!” and pulled her down the slope to check in with the site supervisor.
The site supervisor was a man named Clarence who was very friendly, very welcoming, and very busy. He gave them their name badges, canteens, and quick directions to the research tent at the far end of the dig site, where the artifacts for Anabel’s team were being assembled. Then with a quick, “Welcome to the team!” he sent them on their way.
The path he sent them on went up above the dig, but the earth was dry and crumbly, and Rose had inherited her father’s lankiness rather than her mother’s lithe grace, and so one misstep as she and Shanti hurried along almost ended tragically as the ground beneath her crumbled away. For one terrifying moment, Rose felt herself lose her balance, and she could see herself toppling over the edge, which could only end poorly, but then, a strong arm reached out and grabbed hers, and she found herself being pulled upright - by none other than Scorpius Malfoy.
“Careful there, Miss Weasley,” he said as she stared up at him, breathless not just from the near tumble. “Don’t want to fall in.”
“Scorpius!” she gasped as he set her back on solid ground. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on the keeping girls from falling into holes patrol at the moment, it seems.”
The comment startled a laugh out of Rose, though she could feel the force of Shanti’s eyeroll from beside her, but with a smoothness that came from years of practice, Rose silenced Shanti with a swift elbow to the side.
“Seriously,” she said then. “What are you doing here?”
“I was assigned to the dig, same as you,” he said with a smile.
“By what department?”
“My department,” was his infuriating reply. Rose rolled her eyes.
“Your department?” she repeated. “You want to shed any light on which department that is?” He just smiled.
“It’s a long dig. Maybe you’ll uncover that along with your artifacts. But until then, I really can’t speak of it.”
“So until then, you’ll just continue to be a perpetual enigma?”
“Why? Does my being a perpetual enigma bother you?”
“Not at all,” she said with a quirked eyebrow. “But you should keep in mind that my job involves the solving of perpetual enigmas, so you’re really only increasing the interest.”
He leaned in close. “Maybe that was the whole idea,” he said in a low voice.
“Okay,” said Shanti, finally breaking in. “Nice to see you again, Scorpius, but Rose and I really have to get going. See you around.” And she steered Rose rather forcefully away. Scorpius’s chuckle followed them as they continued heading toward the research tent.
“What was that all about?” Rose asked. Shanti just gave her a look.
“Really?” she asked. “Shall we talk about the unprecedented amount of flirting you were doing back there?” Rose colored.
“I wasn’t flirting,” she tried to argue, but Shanti stopped her with another look. Rose sighed. “Okay, fine,” she said. “But I’m twenty-four, single, and work primarily with females. Are you really going to begrudge me the opportunity to flirt when it comes along?”
“Just don’t let your dad find out you’re flirting with a Malfoy,” Shanti said as a warning, and Rose had to laugh.
“Shanti, don’t let my dad find out I’ve been flirting period,” she corrected. “He thinks I’m still twelve and don’t know about such things. But seriously, what department does he work for?”
The attempts to answer this question carried them all the way to the research tent.
For the next two months, Scorpius Malfoy was a constant presence in Rose Weasley’s life. Even when they didn’t physically occupy the same space, Rose’s mind was constantly pondering the mystery that was Scorpius Malfoy. He gave her very little new material to work with. The few times they had a conversation over lunch that didn’t relate to work, they talked about her and her life a lot, but when it came to him, he grew frustratingly and deliberately vague.
“What do you remember about him?” Rose finally asked Shanti.
“What do you mean?”
“At school. We went to school together for seven years, you must have some memory of him. Some story.”
Shanti considered. “Not really,” she finally said. “I mean, we weren’t in the same house.”
“But we were in the same year!” Rose exclaimed. “This is my point, Shanti! I was Head Girl; I knew everyone, and yet, I still can’t remember anything about him! Not specifically. But someone has to!” A thought occurred to her. “Do you think you could send out some feelers for me?”
“Me? Why me?” Shanti asked.
“Because you’re the one who established the information network that spanned all four houses,” Rose reminded her, and Shanti gave a little smile of pride.
“That I did,” she said. “Fine. I’ll see what I can dig up.” Rose was momentarily taken aback.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Shanti said. “I’m tired of him walking away from every conversation with that smile like he’s enjoying a great joke the rest of us aren’t clued in to.”
But Shanti’s efforts revealed little more than Rose’s. “No one remembers anything?” Rose asked over artifact inventory one morning.
“Anna Pensworth is convinced he was the anonymous Valentine, but other than that, no. The guy was a non-entity.”
“No one is that much of a non-entity,” Rose insisted.
“Maybe he is, though,” Shanti said thoughtfully. “I mean, maybe this enigmaticness isn’t new. Maybe he’s always been a man of mysteries.” Something in her words made Rose pause, quill hovering above parchment. Shanti glanced at her. “Rose?”
“Say that again,” Rose requested.
“Say what? That he’s a man of mysteries?”
“Of mysteries,” Rose repeated in a mutter. “Shanti - do you remember what he said that first day? When I asked him what department he worked for?”
“Um,” Shanti said, frowning and trying to remember. “He said he couldn’t talk about it, didn’t he?”
“No,” Rose said slowly. “No, it was far more awkwardly worded. He said he couldn’t speak of it. You know why? Because he is enjoying a great joke the rest of us aren’t clued in to. Excuse me.” And she stood and strode from the research tent in search of one Scorpius Malfoy.
She found him in the mess tent. “You’re an Unspeakable,” she said without preamble, sliding in across from him. He glanced up, the rest of him frozen.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“You’re an Unspeakable,” she repeated. “You work for the Department of Mysteries. Admit it.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny-”
“Yeah, that means yes,” Rose interrupted. Scorpius peered at her for a moment. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Whenever anyone says that, it always means yes.”
“Okay then,” Scorpius said with a smile. “Then . . . yes.” Rose grinned.
“So,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially. “What room do you work in?” Scorpius laughed and shook his head.
“There’s that Ravenclaw coming out,” he said. “Asking questions you know I’m not going to answer.”
“Aha!” she said, pointing a finger. “I wasn’t a Ravenclaw, I was a Gryffindor. So I’m not the only one who misremembers things.”
“I never said you were a Ravenclaw,” Scorpius said with a half smile then. “I said you had Ravenclaw tendencies coming out. I remember full well that you were in Gryffindor. I also remember that you were a Hatstall. Sorting Hat took quite a while to place you, and I’d bet it came down to the same decision it faced with your mother - Gryffindor or Ravenclaw.” He sipped his coffee while she stared at him.
“You always have to be right, don’t you?” she asked with mock irritation. He shrugged.
“I don’t have to be,” he corrected. “I just usually am.” Rose gave an incredulous breath of a laugh.
“You are the most ridiculously self-assured person I have ever met,” she informed him, and he grinned.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“But!” she said, determined to regain the high ground, “I solved your mystery, so what do you have to say to that?”
“Truthfully?” he asked, standing to clear his tray from the table. “Took you long enough.” And he walked away, leaving Rose staring after him, her mouth open in disbelief.
Three weeks later, they packed up the last of the artifacts destined for the Magical Anthropology Department and stood in the Portkey line next to none other than Scorpius. “You never did tell me,” Rose said, “what interest the Department of Mysteries had in this dig.”
“Nope,” Scorpius agreed cheerfully, hands in his pockets. “I never did.”
Rose shook her head with a smile and Shanti rolled her eyes, and Rose said, “You know, I don’t think you Unspeakables are actually as mysterious as you pretend to be. I think you just want everyone to think you are.”
“And what possible purpose could that serve?” he asked her then, but there was a hint of teasing under the question.
“Perception is power,” she said simply. “And by being perpetual mysteries, the purported driving force behind all magical discoveries, you garner that power in spades. Much more so than you ever would if the truth came out - that you’re ordinary people doing slightly unordinary work behind a shroud of secrecy.”
Scorpius laughed out loud at that. “You’re not far wrong, Rose Weasley,” he admitted then, and Rose felt a sense of accomplishment. “But keep our secret, would you? As a favor to me?” and he flashed a smile at her then that she couldn’t help but return.
“But that puts you in my debt, doesn’t it?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re comfortable with that?”
“Well,” he said, stretching out the word. “I have saved your life twice now, let’s remember to take that into account. But, if I had to be in someone’s debt, I would be in yours any day.”
Beside her, Shanti gagged. “Could you two stand a little further away?” she asked. “You’re getting your flirt all over me.”
Rose gave her a shove, and then they were at the head of the line. “Well, then,” Scorpius said, turning to her. “This is goodbye, then, yes?”
“You mean au revoir, I think, yes? I mean, we are still in France.” Scorpius raised an eyebrow.
“Til we meet again?” he asked. “You want to make that promise, Rose Weasley?” For some unknown reason, Rose felt herself blush.
“I’m not done with you,” she said. “After all, I have yet to prove that you’re an ordinary man.” He smiled one last time.
“Until we meet again, then,” he said, then took the rusty can from the official in charge of the line, and was gone.
III.
Six months after the trip to France, Shanti waltzed into Rose’s office in a stunning new sari and said, “I have an early Christmas present for you. And, blimey, you look gorgeous.”
Rose glanced up from the paperwork she was hurriedly filling in and smiled. “Thanks,” she said, one hand smoothing down the deep green fabric of her new dress robes. “You have a present for me?”
“Yes,” Shanti said, plucking the parchment from Rose’s hand. “It is waiting down at the Christmas party, and Anabel said we could leave all this til Boxing Day, so come on.” Smiling, Rose let herself be led from the room.
“Of what nature is this present?” Rose asked as they made their way to the Ministry Atrium, which had been converted into a ballroom for the evening.
“Well,” Shanti said, linking her arm with Rose’s, “I found someone with stories of Scorpius Malfoy for you.” Rose stopped.
“Really?” she asked, her interest piqued. While she hadn’t pursued information about Scorpius constantly in the six months since she’d last seen him, it had always been at the back of her mind, but hadn’t, until now, yielded any real results.
“Mmhmm,” Shanti said with a smile and a nod. “Reyna Silvestri. She was a Slytherin in our year, and she’s here at the party and willing to talk.”
“Shanti, I could kiss you!” Rose exclaimed.
“Well, don’t do it here,” Shanti said seriously. “I know some boys up in processing who would pay to watch.” She just grinned when Rose shoved her.
The Atrium was alive with activity when they reached it, and Rose was hit with the scope of just how many people worked at the Ministry. “We sure know how to throw a party, don’t we?” Rose asked over the music of what sounded like a full orchestra. Shanti grinned.
“Come on, Reyna’s over here.” They made their way to a corner of the ballroom where small tables had been set out for those wanting to sit and socialize. From a sizable distance, Rose recognized Reyna, striking in black and silver.
“Rose Weasley,” Reyna said in a silky voice as they approached, standing to shake Rose’s hand. “Shanti said you were looking for information about Scorpius from school?”
“If you don’t mind,” Rose said as they all sat around a table.
“May I ask why you’re asking?”
“Because Scorpius is being a mystery on purpose,” Rose said evenly, “and I don’t like it.”
Reyna laughed. “Good a reason as any, I suppose. Well, I don’t mind sharing what I know, but full disclosure, it isn’t that much. I sat behind or beside him in a lot of classes. Prime position to observe.”
“And what did you observe?”
Reyna leaned in over the table and spoke in a much lower voice. “That Scorpius Malfoy is a lot smarter than he let people believe.”
“Are you sure?” Rose asked, her brow creased. “He was middle of the class at best, decidedly average.”
“Because he chose to be,” Reyna said with authority. “But trust me, if he’d put his all into it, he’d have passed up even you, Head Girl.” Rose tried not to bristle at the suggestion.
“How do you know?” she asked carefully.
“Because Scorpius had a notebook, and in it, I watched him write down every answer to every question that every professor asked. Always the right answer. He never rose his hand, never volunteered any information, but he knew it all. If a professor specifically asked him for a question, he’d answer correctly about half the time, but the rest of the time? He’d give a wrong answer, or say he didn’t know. Also, he deliberately answered questions wrong on his tests. I’d watch him, when they were returned, all marked up. Before we ever went over them in class, he was correcting all his answers, comparing them to his book. And I can’t prove it, but I think he did all his homework twice - once for real, for him, and once . . . worse, to turn in for the teachers.”
Rose stared. “Why would anyone do that?” she was finally able to ask. Reyna shrugged.
“All I can tell you is what I observed. The reasons behind the actions remain a mystery. I watched him perform spells perfectly, and then mess them up once the teacher was watching. I saw him hit the right stages in Potions, then deliberately add a wrong ingredient before turning in his flask. I watched an absolutely brilliant young man present himself as far dumber than he actually was, but I can’t offer any insight as to why.”
Rose sighed, considering all this. “Then let me ask you this,” she said. “What-”
But she was interrupted before the question could be asked by a familiar male voice saying, “Ladies.”
She didn’t need to turn around or to hear Reyna say, “Scorpius Malfoy, speak of the devil,” to know who was behind her. Rose grimaced and said, “Thanks for that,” to Reyna, who just smiled. Then she turned.
“Scorpius,” she said cordially with a nod. “Good evening.”
“And to you three,” he said. “Ladies, I wonder if I might interrupt to steal Miss Weasley away.” Rose could practically feel Reyna and Shanti sit up straighter and exchange intrigued looks at that remark.
“For what purpose?” Rose asked, eyes narrowed slightly, trying her best to ignore them.
“A touch of business,” Scorpius said evenly, “and a dance.” Rose felt herself blushing, and she had a feeling neither Shanti nor Reyna had missed it. She covered as swiftly as she could.
“Well, Mr. Malfoy, I am in the middle of an important conversation at the moment, so I fear I’ll have to put you off.”
“No, no,” Reyna broke in with an evil smile. “That was all, really. Don’t refuse a dance on my account.”
“Or the supposed . . . business, either,” Shanti added with a smirk. Rose kicked her under the table.
“Very well,” she said. “If my friends insist.” And with a last glare at the pair of them snickering at her expense, Rose took Scorpius’s hand with all the dignity she could muster and let him lead her out onto the dance floor.
Scorpius Malfoy, Rose discovered, was a skilled dancer. But she was determined not to let that distract her, just as she was determined not to think about the weight of his hand on her waist or the fact that she probably had family members in the vicinity who might at any moment look over to see her dancing with Scorpius Malfoy.
“So, what was your business?” she asked. “So important that it interrupted another conversation?”
“My apologies for that,” Scorpius said with sincerity. “It was unpardonably rude. But in my defense, Miss Dharuna did wave me over.”
“She what?” Rose exclaimed, twisting in his arms to try and glare at Shanti, but she only managed halfway and settled for glowering in her general direction as Scorpius continued to lead her about the dance floor.
“I’ll admit, though, that I was looking for an excuse to ask you to dance,” Scorpius said then, chasing all thoughts of killing Shanti from her mind.
“You were?” Rose asked carefully.
“Yes,” he said amiably. “Miss Weasley, I hear you’ve been asking questions about me.” There was no change in his tone; he was as friendly as ever, but the very fact that he’d been made aware somehow of all her inquiries made a telltale heat rise in her cheeks.
“And what exactly have you heard?” she asked, playing it cool.
“That you and Miss Dharuna have been sending out letters to old schoolfellows, asking after my doings there. That you casually ask those you run into if they remember anything specific about me. That sort of thing.” He looked her in the eye with a smile. “Are these rumors true?” he asked, and Rose thought about being embarrassed for one moment, but then she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“Certainly they are,” she said without hesitation. “I did tell you last time I saw you that I was determined to solve your mystery.” Scorpius’s smile widened.
“You did indeed,” he said. “But you could have asked me these questions, you know.”
“I could have,” Rose agreed. “But I had a feeling you’d be less than forthright, given your delight in perpetual mysteriousness. I thought I’d have more success taking a different route.”
“I see. And I don’t suppose you’d tell me what you’ve learned?” There was a hint of a smirk, as if he’d guessed that she hadn’t learned much, so she decided to meet mystery with mystery.
“No,” she said. “For the time being, that will be my secret.”
“Then, at the very least, may I ask to what these questions tend?”
She had to smile at that, hearing words from her favorite novel inadvertently fall from his lips, and though she knew he wouldn’t recognize the text, she couldn’t help but answer in kind.
“Merely to the illustration of your character,” she quoted, reveling in a for-once private joke, but aware very suddenly how fitting the words still were. “I am trying to make it out.”
“And what is your success?” he said then, and Rose stopped short, frowning.
“Okay, that was weird,” she told him, and he quirked an eyebrow. “The first time could easily have been coincidence, but for you to continue word-for-word after my reply -”
“What, you quote Pride and Prejudice alone?” he asked, and then Rose truly was taken aback.
“You were quoting Pride and Prejudice?” she asked when she could manage words again.
“Why?” he asked with that glint in his eye that she was coming to hate. “Didn’t you recognize it? Your next line is supposed to be ‘I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.’”
She almost swatted him. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware,” she said, exasperated. “And of course I recognize it, but you’re one of the last people I’d expect to know the novel well enough to quote it back at me.”
“What, too girly a book for me to have read?” he asked with mock concern.
“Too Muggle a book,” she corrected.
“Well, okay, fair enough,” he said with an air of concession, though for the life of her, Rose couldn’t guess what he was conceding. “I do prefer the first draft, before the Ministry got a hold of it and censored it to death, but the Muggle version is good, too.”
“Okay, no,” Rose said flatly, and now she did actually stop in the middle of the dance floor.
“Rose,” Scorpius said glancing around, “the point of a dance floor is to keep moving. If we stop, we’re going to get in-”
“Pride and Prejudice is not about wizards.”
“Well, not the version you’ve read, no,” Scorpius said, taking her hand and pulling her back into the dance. Rose allowed this, but did not cease the argument.
“Not any version,” she insisted. “Pride and Prejudice is a Muggle classic.”
“Yes,” Scorpius said patiently, “and most of the world would agree with you on that. I agree with you on that. But before it became a Muggle classic, it was a story about gentlemen from pureblood Wizarding families who fell in love with girls from a half-blood family and had to choose between keeping their bloodlines pure or marrying for love. It was a brilliant piece of social commentary. Austen was a genius.”
“Jane Austen wasn’t a witch!” Rose insisted. “If she was a witch, we would have claimed her! We claim everyone.”
“No, you’re right. She wasn’t a witch. She was a Squib,” Scorpius said with a smile. “Which means that, in addition to being a brilliant piece of social commentary, Pride and Prejudice was also, if you’ll pardon the vernacular, a big ‘suck it’ to a Ministry who refused to acknowledge her existence. Like I said, genius.”
Rose stared at him, trying to determine if he was in earnest. Eventually, she said, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re making this up.”
“I can prove it,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, looking, as always, as if he was enjoying himself immensely.
“How?” Rose asked with narrowed eyes.
“I can show you the manuscript.”
“You have her manuscript?” Rose asked. “Jane Austen’s original Pride and Prejudice wizard version manuscript?”
“Well, not me personally, but the Department.”
“And you can show it to me? You’re allowed to do that?”
Scorpius hesitated for the slightest moment before saying, “There’s a loophole I can exploit.” Rose fixed him with a penetrating gaze, still trying to make out the man before her. “Do you want to see it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Rose said after a long pause. “But if this is some trick, I’m warning you-” He laughed.
“It’s not,” he promised. “But you have to say, ‘Unspeakable Malfoy, I want to see Jane Austen’s original manuscript of Pride and Prejudice.’”
“Why?” she asked warily.
“Do you want to see it or not?”
“Fine,” she said, agreeing to play along. “Unspeakable Malfoy, I want to see Jane Austen’s original manuscript of Pride and Prejudice.”
“Then let’s go,” he said, and started to lead her off the dance floor.
“What, now?” she asked. He gave her a little shrug, eyes twinkling away.
“Why not?” he asked.
Well, Rose could think of many reasons why not - it was after hours, it didn’t technically sound like something that was allowed, it would involve them leaving the Christmas party together when there were at least two people watching them like hawks, there was a very good chance someone related to her might notice - but somehow, despite all those reasons, Rose found herself saying, “All right, then,” and following Scorpius from the room.
They stood before the entrance to the Department of Mysteries moments later, Rose’s heart beating fast with the anticipation of seeing in person a place she’d only heard of in stories from her parents and aunt and uncle.
“Now, unfortunately, I’m going to have to blindfold you for a little bit,” Scorpius said.
“What? Why?” Rose asked. Scorpius grimaced slightly.
“It’s part of that loophole I mentioned earlier,” he said. “The gallery where the manuscript is stored is public access; anyone can request to see anything in there, and we have to take them. But they have to know what they’re looking for, and that it’s housed with us, and the gallery is in the middle of rooms that aren’t public access. So I have to blindfold you. Do you still want to see it?”
Rose narrowed her eyes and glared. “Yes,” she said. “But I will remain highly suspicious of you, if you don’t mind.” Scorpius laughed at that.
“Not at all,” he said, and conjured a blindfold.
The journey in the dark was not uncomfortable, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. Luckily, Scorpius, as he had been when he’d released her from the cursed parchment, was very good at being reassuring, and Rose found herself trusting him all over again. And finally, he stood behind her and untied the blindfold.
He’d called the room they were in now a gallery, but to Rose’s eye, it was much more like a storeroom or a warehouse. Scorpius left her seated at a long research table in the central aisle, and disappeared into the stacks. Rose looked around in shock, marveling at all the things contained in this place that no one seemed to know about.
And then Scorpius reappeared, levitating an old collection of parchment in front of him, which he carefully placed on the table in front of Rose. “That’s it?” Rose asked, breathlessly, but she didn’t need his confirmation, as written in elegant script on the front page was First Impressions by Jane Austen.
“Here,” Scorpius said softly, offering a pair of white cotton gloves to her.
“I can handle it?” she asked, taking them. At his nod, she very carefully and delicately turned the pages, reveling in the reality of what she was holding, catching lines and phrases here and there different from what she remembered.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Wizard in possession of fortune and lineage, must be in want of a pureblood wife.
“There were some very strong objections to the lady - a Muggle mother, and if that weren’t enough, it is rumored that one of the sisters is a Squib!”
And in one of her favorite scenes, “I might as well inquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason and even against your character? That you loved me in spite of my inferior blood, Muggle mother, and Squib sister? Was this not some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?”
And, “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your blood? - to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own? To introduce into the immaculate Darcy line, blood that has produced an unMagical child?”
She read in wonder, and finally, she tore her eyes away from the page. “This is . . . incredible,” she said. “I can’t believe. . .” She trailed off, not being able to put it into words. But he seemed to understand regardless.
“Happy Christmas, Rose,” he said softly. She shook her head in wonder, her gloved hand tracing the delicate pages with a reverence.
“I don’t have anything for you in return,” she said. “This . . . I wouldn’t even know how to match it.”
“Then it’s lucky that that’s not how gifts work. And besides, you have given me something.” Rose looked up at that.
“What?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Rose,” he said, sitting beside her and taking one of her gloved hands in a gesture that made Rose’s heart beat a little faster, “the sheer enthusiasm and appreciation that you have for the world around you . . . it’s incredible. And it’s heartening. That’s what you’ve given me. The opportunity to watch you experience this . . . believe me, that’s gift enough.”
Rose didn’t quite know what to say in the face of this declaration. She knew she was blushing furiously, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eye. She cast her eyes around for something else to focus on, and in the end, pointed randomly at a nearby shelf.
“So what’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what?” he replied, taking the change in topic in stride.
“This, over here,” she said, standing and crossing to the shelf and deciding to ask about an ornate golden spyglass. “I mean, if you bring me down here, you can’t expect me not to explore and ask questions.”
“No, you’re right,” he said with a smile. “I would be quite foolish to expect that.”
“So?” Rose prompted.
“That,” Scorpius said, joining her at the case, “is the Erised spyglass.”
“Erised as in Mirror of?” Rose asked.
“They go together, yes,” Scorpius said with a nod. “The spyglass allows a person to look in on someone else’s desire. If I stood in front of the Mirror, and you looked through this glass, you would see what I saw.”
Rose exhaled heavily. “That could be a powerful weapon,” she said. Scorpius gave her an unreadable look.
“Or a very significant gift,” he countered after a moment. He replaced the spyglass carefully on the shelf, and then Rose was off to ask about another item and another and another until nearly an hour had passed in this way. Then, they returned to the manuscript on the table, and with regret, Rose closed it and handed it to him.
“I suppose we ought to get back to the party,” she said softly.
“Probably, yes,” Scorpius agreed.
“Thank you, Scorpius. Truly.” He smiled.
“It was my pleasure, Miss Weasley.” He replaced her blindfold then, and led her out of the Department of Mysteries and back to the Christmas party and Shanti, who was waiting not-so-patiently for answers. “Until we meet again, then?” he asked as they stood in the doorway. Rose hesitated, then nodded.
“Until we meet again,” she confirmed, though with a slight pang of regret at the realization that she had no idea when that might be.
To Be Continued
Author: realmer06
Prompt: "May I ask to what these questions tend?"
"Merely to the illustration of your character," said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."
"And what is your success?"
She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly." - Pride and Prejudice
Summary: Rose and Scorpius can’t seem to stop meeting each other - but what exactly is it that keeps pulling them together?
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: References to sexual activity, mild cursing
Word Count: (if applicable) ~18,500 altogether
A/N: I’m a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice, so I was so excited to write for this prompt! I hope I did the references justice, and I hope you enjoy this monster of a fic! Huge thanks, as ever, to M, my beta, who not only kept me on track with this beast, she also let me write her into the story as Shanti, the thoroughly unromantic best friend.
Universally Acknowledged or
Five Times Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy Crossed Paths
(and one time their paths converged)
I.
The field of Magical Anthropology was relatively new when Rose Weasley got to it. As a child, her Muggle grandparents had taken her to museum after museum, and whether she was fighting crowds to glimpse the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum or standing on tiptoe to peek high enough over the glass-covered counter to see Jane Austen’s hand-written first draft of Pride and Prejudice in the British Library, she came to love the feeling of being surrounded by the sheer weight of history.
Rose had loved those trips with her grandparents more than anything, and she had been dismayed to discover that the Wizarding world had no equivalent, no central place open to the public to hold all their history. It seemed like a tremendous oversight to her eight-year-old mind, and by the time she’d finished at Hogwarts, that had hardly changed. So she’d done some research and discovered a little-known division of the Ministry that had formed out of the end of the Last Great War, dedicated to recovering and uncovering magical heritage all over the world. The brand new department was responsible for research expeditions to all parts of the earth. Rose had signed on in an instant.
And four years later, at the age of twenty-two, she gleefully received a crate of scrolls that had been uncovered at a dig near Stonehenge, and her excitement was like nothing so much as a child on Christmas morning.
“Grabby much?” her co-worker and good friend Shanti asked with a laugh as she handed over the box.
“This is us, Shanti,” Rose said, her excitement barely contained. “This isn’t Aztec relics from North American or evidence of shamans in tribal Africa, this is us, our roots, right here in England, older than the Founding, older than anything we’ve ever seen, and it’s English!”
“Well, Celtic, most likely,” Rose’s supervisor Anabel said as she passed through the lab. “How’s your Runic translation?”
“Top of my class,” Rose assured her. “Can I please break the seals?”
“Make sure you perform all the -”
“- proper disarming and evaluation charms for presence of malicious intent, yes, yes. I will follow all protocol to the letter, as always.”
“Go on, then,” Anabel said with a laugh, and Rose skipped off to a private workstation. Grinning with anticipation, she broke the seal on the first scroll and began to read.
Almost an hour and a half later, Anabel and Shanti realized that Rose had been sitting without moving for the better part of all that time, frozen as she stared at the first scroll she had opened. Nothing that they said or did had any effect to pull her out of the trance - she was lost to them.
Rose was aware of nothing but the strange Runes in an ancient hand. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but sit and stare and read.
After an endless length of time which seemed like no time at all, Rose slowly became aware of speech, but as if through a long tunnel, the way conversation sounds to the almost-asleep. And what she heard, repeated periodically in a smooth and low voice that never fell silent, was her name.
“ . . . Miss Weasley, if you are able to hear and understand me, I’m going to ask you to try and let me know. Now if you can’t, that’s all right, no need to panic. I know you may not be in control of your body, but let’s just try something, okay?” The voice was male and soothing and reassuring, and it calmed her panic before it had a chance to do more than form halfway. She didn’t know who was speaking, but she trusted him.
“Miss Weasley, if you can hear and understand me, I’d like you to try and look up from that paper.” Rose tried, she did, but she couldn’t, and as she felt the grip tighten around her, the panic swelled up again, but before it could overwhelm her, the voice was back. “If you can’t,” it said, as if anticipating the panic, “it’s all right. It’s not a problem. That was a big step to ask at first; there are plenty of other things we can try.”
Another voice spoke, asking a question, but Rose couldn’t detach enough from the scroll to discern what the question was. She only heard her voice’s response.
“I don’t, no, but either she can’t hear me at all, or she can, and she just can’t respond. If it’s the first, I lose nothing by being reassuring. But if it’s the second, she’s probably frightened, as I know I would be, so being reassuring is the least I can do. Now, excuse me, please, but I do need to give her my full attention. Now, Miss Weasley,” he said, he voice becoming more distinct as he presumably turned back to her, “I don’t want you to think me forward, but calling you by a name you hear more often will likely yield better results, so I’m going to start calling you Rose. I hope that’s all right, but if not, you can tell me off just as soon as we get you free. So, Rose, here’s what I’d like us to try next. If you can move your head at all, please do so. A shake, a nod, anything.”
Rose tried, she really did, but nothing happened. However, again, just when she was on the verge of panic, the man’s voice came back in. “That’s all right, don’t worry. We’ll focus down a little more, and we’ll get there, Rose. It’s okay. How about an arm? Any part of an arm, a shoulder, an elbow? Can you move anything like that?” She could not. “That’s all right, an arm wouldn’t have been my first choice, anyway, so let’s try your hand. Even just a finger.”
Rose concentrated as hard as she could and managed to twitch one finger, just a little bit. She was immediately elated, but then worried that he hadn’t seen it.
“Okay, Rose, I saw a little bit of movement from your left pointer finger. Now, if that was you, consciously moving it, I’d like you to do it again.” She concentrated with all her might, and this time, the movement came easier, and she was able to actually lift and tap her finger. “Brilliant,” the young man said, and he sounded like he meant it. “But one more time, just to be sure, if you are in control of that finger, and are using it to communicate with me, please tap it twice.” She did, though it took all her effort to do so.
“Excellent, Rose, really excellent,” he said then, and she felt a surge of relief. “Okay, now that we can communicate, I have some simple questions to ask that will help me know how to proceed. The first, and most important - what’s holding you, does it feel malicious in any way? Do you feel threatened by it? Tap once for yes, and twice for no.”
Rose considered the question, probing carefully at the lock around her mind, then tapped her finger twice. “Okay, Rose, I saw two taps. So you are telling me that you do not feel threatened by the spell that holds you, is that correct?”
One tap.
“Well, that is marvelously good news,” he said, and Rose thought she could hear a smile in his voice. “That makes our next step much easier. Rose, I think if we can show the spell that you’re not interested in stealing the secrets of the scroll, we’ll be able to get it to let you go.”
And how exactly are we going to do that? Rose wanted to ask, but that was a bit difficult to communicate through finger taps. Luckily, whoever this mystery man was, he seemed to have a fairly good understanding of her, because he launched into an explanation almost immediately.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions. They’ll start out simple, and they’ll get more and more complicated and specific. I want you to have to really think about the answers and how to communicate them. The more you’re focusing on the answers to my questions, the less you’re focusing on the scroll. If we can detach your focus from the scroll, piece by piece, we can also pull it away from you, like . . . peeling away a sticker, there’s a good Muggle metaphor. And if we’re careful, we’ll be able to do it without leaving any of that annoying residue behind. So, tap once if you understand, twice if you don’t, and . . . oh, three times if you understood a while ago and have just been waiting for me to shut up.”
If Rose could have smiled, she would have. She tapped three times, and the man chuckled. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “I have a tendency to go on a bit.” Rose tapped once then, and won a full out laugh. “All right, then, Miss Snarky, let’s get started. Is your full name Rose Eleanor Weasley? Tap once for yes, twice for no.”
One tap.
“Are your parents Ron Weasley and Angelina Johnson-Weasley?”
Two taps.
“Are you the fifth eldest Weasley grandchild?”
Here Rose hesitated slightly, then slowly tapped twice.
“Please tap your finger once for each of your male cousins.”
James. Tap. Al. Tap. Fred. Tap. Louis. Tap. Hu- no, Rose. Not Hugo. She curled away the finger she had prematurely lifted to tap.
“Almost count your brother as a cousin there, Rose?” She knew she heard a smirk in the voice this time. Mentally making a face she usually reserved for her cousin, Rose tapped her finger three times. The man laughed. “I don’t know what three taps means in this instance, but I think I can guess.” Rose flicked her fingers at him then for further emphasis. “All right, all right,” he said, still laughing. “Moving on. In what month were you born?”
She hesitated, not sure how best to communicate the information. He jumped right on her hesitation. “Come on, Rose,” he said. “It’s not a difficult question, even if you are limited to finger taps. But I’m not telling you what to do anymore. Time to think for yourself.”
All right then! she thought, exasperated, and carefully began counting as she tapped slowly. One, two, three, four, five, six . . . seven, or no, was that eight? She froze, her finger stalled in the air, mid-tap. She felt a stirring of something in the back of her mind, and she couldn’t remember what month she was on, and she could feel the something in her mind starting to frown at her, and reach for her, and she was becoming less aware of the question she was answering, and more aware of those symbols on the parchment -
“Rose?” His voice cut through the fog. “You’ve stopped at seven. Unless July is your birth month, you need to keep going. Pick up where you left off.”
More determined than ever, she wrenched her mind away from the parchment. November, she though firmly. I was born in November. It was cold, and it was rainy, and Dad was in such a hurry to get inside that he slipped on the walk and fell and broke his wrist. And Aunt Ginny still teases him about trying to steal focus away from his daughter. And feeling further away from the ancient scroll than she had since she started reading it, she lifted her finger and tapped four more times.
“There you go. Now, what day?”
That was too much. “I am not tapping my finger 26 times!” she said fiercely, and then realized she’d spoken aloud.
“Well, then, as a reward for finding your voice, you don’t have to,” the man said. “Can you move at all, Rose? Can you lower the parchment and look away?”
“I -” She tried, she really did. “No,” she said, and her voice wavered infuriatingly as panic reared up again. She had to get free! “No, I can’t, I-!”
“It’s all right,” he said immediately, his voice soothing and calm as ever. “It’s all right, Rose. We’re making fantastic progress. The fact that you can speak at all, this soon, shows me that. So don’t worry. I got you this far, I’m going to get you the rest of the way. I promise. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she said in a shaky but far calmer voice.
“Good girl,” he said. “Now, am I right in thinking you can’t close your eyes?”
She tried, and couldn’t. “Yes,” she told him.
“Okay,” he said. “Then let me explain what I want to do. I want to get the scroll away from you, physically. But I don’t want to try and take it from you while you’re looking at it. I don’t know what would happen, and I don’t want to risk it. So I’m going to physically close your eyes first, okay? I’m going to come behind you and use my hand to shut them. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” Rose said, and then a moment later, a warm hand gently shut her eyes.
“Okay, now tell me a story.”
“What?” Rose asked, confused.
“Tell me a story,” he repeated. “A story from your childhood. Tell me . . . oh, I don’t know, the first time you read your favorite book. In as much detail as you can.”
“Okay,” Rose said, still a little confused, but she thought she understood what he was going to try and do. “Um . . . when I was seven, my grandmum, on Mum’s side, took me to the British Library. We’d had a girls’ day in Muggle London, just the two of us, and when she told me about the huge library, well, I had to see it. And they have a room there, a gallery, just full of old original manuscripts of, oh, everything, really. Shakespeare’s Quartos and DaVinci’s sketches and original sheet music written by Mozart, I think. But what I really remember is Jane Austen’s writing desk. They had it in a glass case, her desk with a pen and ink and everything, and her original, handwritten manuscript of Pride and Prejudice open on it. I was barely tall enough to see it, but I stood on tiptoe and I read as much as I could, and there was just something about the language. I hardly understood it, but it captivated me. I went home and asked Mum if we could read it, and even though I was only seven, she said yes. And it’s still one of my favorites.”
She shifted in her seat, then frowned, eyes still closed. She realized she was no longer frozen, and that she wasn’t holding anything anymore. “Can I open my eyes?” she asked.
“Hmmm?” the voice said from across the room. “Oh, yes. You should be able to.” She opened them to see a tall blonde man about her age who looked vaguely familiar rolling up the cursed scroll very carefully. When he caught her eye, he smiled. “Sorry about that. Didn’t want to interrupt.” The scroll now rolled into a tight cylinder and resealed, he handed it to a partner she hadn’t even known was in the room. “Take it straight to Davison, but tell him not to break the seal, whatever he does. Oh, and I suppose you can send the other two back in. They look about ready to burst through the door any moment.”
The other man nodded, and exited, and before Rose could express her gratitude or ask the man’s name, Shanti and Anabel were at her side, worrying over her and expressing their relief and concern in a rather exhausting way.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she tried to tell them both. “Really.”
“Is she?” Anabel asked the blonde young man.
“Oh, yes,” he said with a smile and a nod. “Miss Weasley has a very resilient mind. She’ll bounce right back from the encounter, though policy dictates she should go home for the rest of the day.”
And before Rose could say that she was fine, that she didn’t need the rest of the day off - which was a lie; she felt like crap, but she didn’t want to admit it - Anabel broke in, saying, “Well, if that’s what she needs, then that’s what will happen.”
“Rose, I’ve never seen anything so scary in all my life,” Shanti said, hugging her from the side. “You sitting there without moving like that.”
“Really, I’m fine,” she said softly, still trying to listen in on the mystery man’s conversation with Anabel.
“. . . do have a few more questions I need to ask Miss Weasley,” she managed to catch him say, “and I don’t want to disrupt your work any longer.”
“Of course,” Anabel said, and ushered Shanti out despite her adamant protests.
“I really don’t need the rest of the day off,” Rose said when the door had clicked shut, even though it was blatantly untrue, given the pounding in her head and the weakness she couldn’t shake.
“Yes, you do,” the man said with kind authority. “Even if Ministry guidelines didn’t demand it, you have a splitting headache and you’re as exhausted as you would be if you’d stayed up all night and then run a 5k.” Rose stared at him.
“How did you - ?” she asked, and he gave her a soft smile.
“Because I have some experience with this, Miss Weasley,” he said kindly. “Besides, even if you don’t need it, they do. If you don’t go home, they’ll just hover over you for the rest of the day, and you don’t seem like someone who would particularly enjoy that.” Rose grimaced, then sighed.
“They mean well,” she said, trying to defend her friends.
“I know that they do,” was his response.
“You said you had more questions for me?” she asked then, and he nodded.
“Yes. I need to know what happened before you broke the seals on the scrolls.” Rose grimaced again.
“You mean you need to know if I skirted procedure,” she said bluntly, and he smiled. “I assure you, I performed every precautionary enchantment we have. I performed them all twice. I don’t know what was in that seal, but it wasn’t anything - ” He stopped her with a raised hand.
“Miss Weasley, I believe you,” he said calmly. “I am well aware of your attention to detail, and I think I can safely say that there was nothing you could have done in the situation to avoid what happened. My questions are designed to help me further understand the nature of the spell itself and how to recognize and safeguard against it in the future. Now, are you able to recall what you read, any of it, even a little?”
His questions were incredibly detailed and specific, and she answered them as best she could. He didn’t seem let down at all when she couldn’t give a definite response; on the contrary, he seemed thrilled with even the little that she could tell him. And through the whole interview, something about him continued to nag at her. He was incredibly familiar, but she couldn’t place him, and it was driving her mad.
“Are you a curse breaker?” she asked as he started to pack up his bag. He glanced at her.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“An Auror?” she tried again.
“No,” he repeated with a slight smile this time.
“A Healer, then?”
“No, Miss Weasley,” he said, and he sounded almost apologetic, but he didn’t reveal any more information.
“Then who do you work for?” she asked, exasperated.
“The Ministry, same as you,” was all he said. “Now, then, if in the next few days, you suffer any sudden ill effects that you think are related to the incident, let your supervisor know immediately. And if you see these symbols on anything else that comes in from the dig. She’ll know how to contact us. I’m glad I could be of service to you, Miss Weasley,” he said, standing and extending his hand to her.
“Miss Weasley?” she repeated, taking his hand and shaking it. “You called me Rose before.”
“Rose,” he said with a smile and a nod.
“And now you have me at a disadvantage,” she said, throwing caution to the wind because she had to know who he was. “Because you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
The look he gave her then was very strange. His eyes narrowed, though they never lost their gleam of amusement. She was struck with the sudden thought that he saw the who world as one cosmic joke no one but he had been let in on. “Really,” he said, interest lining his voice. “You don’t know who I am.” It was not quite a question.
Rose grimaced and bit her lip in embarrassment. “I knew it,” she said. “I should know. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod, drawing the word out. “That you should, Rose Weasley.” She wracked her brain, she really did, but it wasn’t there.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “really, I feel like an idiot. You look so familiar, but I just can’t place you, and I’m digging myself deeper into this hole with every word, aren’t I?”
The mystery man nodded, but it was clear he was enjoying himself. Rose took a deep breath and screwed up her face. “Give me a hint,” she begged.
“Well, we went to school together for seven years,” he said then. “We weren’t in the same house, but we were in the same year, and we shared three N.E.W.T. classes, and those aren’t exactly large.”
It hit her all of a sudden, and now she really did feel like an idiot.
“Scorpius Malfoy,” she said with a groan.
“There we are,” he said with a grin.
“Oh, I’m a complete dolt,” she said, burying her face in her hands, but his amusement at it all enabled her to laugh through the embarrassment, too. “Can you ever forgive me?” she asked, and he laughed.
“Don’t mention it,” he said, all needling gone. “It’s not like we ever really interacted.”
“Still,” she insisted. “You’d think I’d have the courtesy to remember the first boy my father ever warned me away from.” His eyebrows shot up at that.
“No kidding,” he said, and she nodded.
“Yep. Train to Hogwarts, first year.”
“Didn’t waste any time, did he?” he said with a grin.
“Where a Malfoy was involved? Certainly not,” she said, and then they stood without speaking for a moment or two, just long enough for the situation to become awkward, which they both jumped to remedy at the same time.
“Anyway-” Rose said, just as Scorpius said, “I should probably-” and then they both laughed awkwardly, and Rose gestured for him to continue.
“I was saying I should probably get back to my office.”
“Probably,” Rose agreed. “And I should probably be heading home to get some rest and drink plenty of fluids, hmm?”
“Always good advice,” Scorpius said, extending his hand to her again. “Until next time, Rose.”
“Well, if I’m on top of my job, there shouldn’t be a next time, right?” She’d meant it as a joke, but for some reason, it didn’t quite come off that way. “Thank you again, Scorpius,” she said, and with one last nod, he left. Rose watched him go with an incomprehensible pang of regret that she probably wouldn’t cross paths with him again.
II.
Twenty-four-year-old Rose Weasley took a deep breath as she stepped off the transport and into the bright summer sunlight. “Smell it, Shanti,” she said with enthusiasm as her companion trudged up beside her.
“It smells the same as England,” Shanti said.
"No, it doesn't," Rose said, inhaling again. "It smells like freedom! Freedom and opportunity!" Shanti laughed.
"I think that transport knocked something loose," she said. "We're standing in a field in the middle of France. It's not like we're in Egypt or anything."
"But it's our first solo dig," Rose said, refusing to curb her enthusiasm. "We're on our own, practicing our craft, off to make discoveries heretofore undiscovered!"
"You do realize that we're working on a team of fifteen and that Anabel will be Apparating in about twice a week, right? Also, it's France."
But not even Shanti's unromantic view of the situation could dim Rose's spirits. "It's the principle of the thing, Shanti. And I know you're just as excited to be here as I am, deep down."
That won a smile out of Shanti. "Maybe," she allowed, but then she grinned at Rose, and grabbed her hand, and the two girls took off at a run. Moments later, they crested a hill and stopped short at the sight that greeted them.
Spread out below them, covering half a mile at least, was a massive, dusty, marvelous excavation site, a team of archaeologists already hard at work. Rose stood, drinking it all in, but Shanti gave her hand a tug and said, “Well, come on! We didn’t come all the way across the Channel just to look at it!” and pulled her down the slope to check in with the site supervisor.
The site supervisor was a man named Clarence who was very friendly, very welcoming, and very busy. He gave them their name badges, canteens, and quick directions to the research tent at the far end of the dig site, where the artifacts for Anabel’s team were being assembled. Then with a quick, “Welcome to the team!” he sent them on their way.
The path he sent them on went up above the dig, but the earth was dry and crumbly, and Rose had inherited her father’s lankiness rather than her mother’s lithe grace, and so one misstep as she and Shanti hurried along almost ended tragically as the ground beneath her crumbled away. For one terrifying moment, Rose felt herself lose her balance, and she could see herself toppling over the edge, which could only end poorly, but then, a strong arm reached out and grabbed hers, and she found herself being pulled upright - by none other than Scorpius Malfoy.
“Careful there, Miss Weasley,” he said as she stared up at him, breathless not just from the near tumble. “Don’t want to fall in.”
“Scorpius!” she gasped as he set her back on solid ground. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on the keeping girls from falling into holes patrol at the moment, it seems.”
The comment startled a laugh out of Rose, though she could feel the force of Shanti’s eyeroll from beside her, but with a smoothness that came from years of practice, Rose silenced Shanti with a swift elbow to the side.
“Seriously,” she said then. “What are you doing here?”
“I was assigned to the dig, same as you,” he said with a smile.
“By what department?”
“My department,” was his infuriating reply. Rose rolled her eyes.
“Your department?” she repeated. “You want to shed any light on which department that is?” He just smiled.
“It’s a long dig. Maybe you’ll uncover that along with your artifacts. But until then, I really can’t speak of it.”
“So until then, you’ll just continue to be a perpetual enigma?”
“Why? Does my being a perpetual enigma bother you?”
“Not at all,” she said with a quirked eyebrow. “But you should keep in mind that my job involves the solving of perpetual enigmas, so you’re really only increasing the interest.”
He leaned in close. “Maybe that was the whole idea,” he said in a low voice.
“Okay,” said Shanti, finally breaking in. “Nice to see you again, Scorpius, but Rose and I really have to get going. See you around.” And she steered Rose rather forcefully away. Scorpius’s chuckle followed them as they continued heading toward the research tent.
“What was that all about?” Rose asked. Shanti just gave her a look.
“Really?” she asked. “Shall we talk about the unprecedented amount of flirting you were doing back there?” Rose colored.
“I wasn’t flirting,” she tried to argue, but Shanti stopped her with another look. Rose sighed. “Okay, fine,” she said. “But I’m twenty-four, single, and work primarily with females. Are you really going to begrudge me the opportunity to flirt when it comes along?”
“Just don’t let your dad find out you’re flirting with a Malfoy,” Shanti said as a warning, and Rose had to laugh.
“Shanti, don’t let my dad find out I’ve been flirting period,” she corrected. “He thinks I’m still twelve and don’t know about such things. But seriously, what department does he work for?”
The attempts to answer this question carried them all the way to the research tent.
For the next two months, Scorpius Malfoy was a constant presence in Rose Weasley’s life. Even when they didn’t physically occupy the same space, Rose’s mind was constantly pondering the mystery that was Scorpius Malfoy. He gave her very little new material to work with. The few times they had a conversation over lunch that didn’t relate to work, they talked about her and her life a lot, but when it came to him, he grew frustratingly and deliberately vague.
“What do you remember about him?” Rose finally asked Shanti.
“What do you mean?”
“At school. We went to school together for seven years, you must have some memory of him. Some story.”
Shanti considered. “Not really,” she finally said. “I mean, we weren’t in the same house.”
“But we were in the same year!” Rose exclaimed. “This is my point, Shanti! I was Head Girl; I knew everyone, and yet, I still can’t remember anything about him! Not specifically. But someone has to!” A thought occurred to her. “Do you think you could send out some feelers for me?”
“Me? Why me?” Shanti asked.
“Because you’re the one who established the information network that spanned all four houses,” Rose reminded her, and Shanti gave a little smile of pride.
“That I did,” she said. “Fine. I’ll see what I can dig up.” Rose was momentarily taken aback.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Shanti said. “I’m tired of him walking away from every conversation with that smile like he’s enjoying a great joke the rest of us aren’t clued in to.”
But Shanti’s efforts revealed little more than Rose’s. “No one remembers anything?” Rose asked over artifact inventory one morning.
“Anna Pensworth is convinced he was the anonymous Valentine, but other than that, no. The guy was a non-entity.”
“No one is that much of a non-entity,” Rose insisted.
“Maybe he is, though,” Shanti said thoughtfully. “I mean, maybe this enigmaticness isn’t new. Maybe he’s always been a man of mysteries.” Something in her words made Rose pause, quill hovering above parchment. Shanti glanced at her. “Rose?”
“Say that again,” Rose requested.
“Say what? That he’s a man of mysteries?”
“Of mysteries,” Rose repeated in a mutter. “Shanti - do you remember what he said that first day? When I asked him what department he worked for?”
“Um,” Shanti said, frowning and trying to remember. “He said he couldn’t talk about it, didn’t he?”
“No,” Rose said slowly. “No, it was far more awkwardly worded. He said he couldn’t speak of it. You know why? Because he is enjoying a great joke the rest of us aren’t clued in to. Excuse me.” And she stood and strode from the research tent in search of one Scorpius Malfoy.
She found him in the mess tent. “You’re an Unspeakable,” she said without preamble, sliding in across from him. He glanced up, the rest of him frozen.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“You’re an Unspeakable,” she repeated. “You work for the Department of Mysteries. Admit it.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny-”
“Yeah, that means yes,” Rose interrupted. Scorpius peered at her for a moment. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Whenever anyone says that, it always means yes.”
“Okay then,” Scorpius said with a smile. “Then . . . yes.” Rose grinned.
“So,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially. “What room do you work in?” Scorpius laughed and shook his head.
“There’s that Ravenclaw coming out,” he said. “Asking questions you know I’m not going to answer.”
“Aha!” she said, pointing a finger. “I wasn’t a Ravenclaw, I was a Gryffindor. So I’m not the only one who misremembers things.”
“I never said you were a Ravenclaw,” Scorpius said with a half smile then. “I said you had Ravenclaw tendencies coming out. I remember full well that you were in Gryffindor. I also remember that you were a Hatstall. Sorting Hat took quite a while to place you, and I’d bet it came down to the same decision it faced with your mother - Gryffindor or Ravenclaw.” He sipped his coffee while she stared at him.
“You always have to be right, don’t you?” she asked with mock irritation. He shrugged.
“I don’t have to be,” he corrected. “I just usually am.” Rose gave an incredulous breath of a laugh.
“You are the most ridiculously self-assured person I have ever met,” she informed him, and he grinned.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“But!” she said, determined to regain the high ground, “I solved your mystery, so what do you have to say to that?”
“Truthfully?” he asked, standing to clear his tray from the table. “Took you long enough.” And he walked away, leaving Rose staring after him, her mouth open in disbelief.
Three weeks later, they packed up the last of the artifacts destined for the Magical Anthropology Department and stood in the Portkey line next to none other than Scorpius. “You never did tell me,” Rose said, “what interest the Department of Mysteries had in this dig.”
“Nope,” Scorpius agreed cheerfully, hands in his pockets. “I never did.”
Rose shook her head with a smile and Shanti rolled her eyes, and Rose said, “You know, I don’t think you Unspeakables are actually as mysterious as you pretend to be. I think you just want everyone to think you are.”
“And what possible purpose could that serve?” he asked her then, but there was a hint of teasing under the question.
“Perception is power,” she said simply. “And by being perpetual mysteries, the purported driving force behind all magical discoveries, you garner that power in spades. Much more so than you ever would if the truth came out - that you’re ordinary people doing slightly unordinary work behind a shroud of secrecy.”
Scorpius laughed out loud at that. “You’re not far wrong, Rose Weasley,” he admitted then, and Rose felt a sense of accomplishment. “But keep our secret, would you? As a favor to me?” and he flashed a smile at her then that she couldn’t help but return.
“But that puts you in my debt, doesn’t it?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re comfortable with that?”
“Well,” he said, stretching out the word. “I have saved your life twice now, let’s remember to take that into account. But, if I had to be in someone’s debt, I would be in yours any day.”
Beside her, Shanti gagged. “Could you two stand a little further away?” she asked. “You’re getting your flirt all over me.”
Rose gave her a shove, and then they were at the head of the line. “Well, then,” Scorpius said, turning to her. “This is goodbye, then, yes?”
“You mean au revoir, I think, yes? I mean, we are still in France.” Scorpius raised an eyebrow.
“Til we meet again?” he asked. “You want to make that promise, Rose Weasley?” For some unknown reason, Rose felt herself blush.
“I’m not done with you,” she said. “After all, I have yet to prove that you’re an ordinary man.” He smiled one last time.
“Until we meet again, then,” he said, then took the rusty can from the official in charge of the line, and was gone.
III.
Six months after the trip to France, Shanti waltzed into Rose’s office in a stunning new sari and said, “I have an early Christmas present for you. And, blimey, you look gorgeous.”
Rose glanced up from the paperwork she was hurriedly filling in and smiled. “Thanks,” she said, one hand smoothing down the deep green fabric of her new dress robes. “You have a present for me?”
“Yes,” Shanti said, plucking the parchment from Rose’s hand. “It is waiting down at the Christmas party, and Anabel said we could leave all this til Boxing Day, so come on.” Smiling, Rose let herself be led from the room.
“Of what nature is this present?” Rose asked as they made their way to the Ministry Atrium, which had been converted into a ballroom for the evening.
“Well,” Shanti said, linking her arm with Rose’s, “I found someone with stories of Scorpius Malfoy for you.” Rose stopped.
“Really?” she asked, her interest piqued. While she hadn’t pursued information about Scorpius constantly in the six months since she’d last seen him, it had always been at the back of her mind, but hadn’t, until now, yielded any real results.
“Mmhmm,” Shanti said with a smile and a nod. “Reyna Silvestri. She was a Slytherin in our year, and she’s here at the party and willing to talk.”
“Shanti, I could kiss you!” Rose exclaimed.
“Well, don’t do it here,” Shanti said seriously. “I know some boys up in processing who would pay to watch.” She just grinned when Rose shoved her.
The Atrium was alive with activity when they reached it, and Rose was hit with the scope of just how many people worked at the Ministry. “We sure know how to throw a party, don’t we?” Rose asked over the music of what sounded like a full orchestra. Shanti grinned.
“Come on, Reyna’s over here.” They made their way to a corner of the ballroom where small tables had been set out for those wanting to sit and socialize. From a sizable distance, Rose recognized Reyna, striking in black and silver.
“Rose Weasley,” Reyna said in a silky voice as they approached, standing to shake Rose’s hand. “Shanti said you were looking for information about Scorpius from school?”
“If you don’t mind,” Rose said as they all sat around a table.
“May I ask why you’re asking?”
“Because Scorpius is being a mystery on purpose,” Rose said evenly, “and I don’t like it.”
Reyna laughed. “Good a reason as any, I suppose. Well, I don’t mind sharing what I know, but full disclosure, it isn’t that much. I sat behind or beside him in a lot of classes. Prime position to observe.”
“And what did you observe?”
Reyna leaned in over the table and spoke in a much lower voice. “That Scorpius Malfoy is a lot smarter than he let people believe.”
“Are you sure?” Rose asked, her brow creased. “He was middle of the class at best, decidedly average.”
“Because he chose to be,” Reyna said with authority. “But trust me, if he’d put his all into it, he’d have passed up even you, Head Girl.” Rose tried not to bristle at the suggestion.
“How do you know?” she asked carefully.
“Because Scorpius had a notebook, and in it, I watched him write down every answer to every question that every professor asked. Always the right answer. He never rose his hand, never volunteered any information, but he knew it all. If a professor specifically asked him for a question, he’d answer correctly about half the time, but the rest of the time? He’d give a wrong answer, or say he didn’t know. Also, he deliberately answered questions wrong on his tests. I’d watch him, when they were returned, all marked up. Before we ever went over them in class, he was correcting all his answers, comparing them to his book. And I can’t prove it, but I think he did all his homework twice - once for real, for him, and once . . . worse, to turn in for the teachers.”
Rose stared. “Why would anyone do that?” she was finally able to ask. Reyna shrugged.
“All I can tell you is what I observed. The reasons behind the actions remain a mystery. I watched him perform spells perfectly, and then mess them up once the teacher was watching. I saw him hit the right stages in Potions, then deliberately add a wrong ingredient before turning in his flask. I watched an absolutely brilliant young man present himself as far dumber than he actually was, but I can’t offer any insight as to why.”
Rose sighed, considering all this. “Then let me ask you this,” she said. “What-”
But she was interrupted before the question could be asked by a familiar male voice saying, “Ladies.”
She didn’t need to turn around or to hear Reyna say, “Scorpius Malfoy, speak of the devil,” to know who was behind her. Rose grimaced and said, “Thanks for that,” to Reyna, who just smiled. Then she turned.
“Scorpius,” she said cordially with a nod. “Good evening.”
“And to you three,” he said. “Ladies, I wonder if I might interrupt to steal Miss Weasley away.” Rose could practically feel Reyna and Shanti sit up straighter and exchange intrigued looks at that remark.
“For what purpose?” Rose asked, eyes narrowed slightly, trying her best to ignore them.
“A touch of business,” Scorpius said evenly, “and a dance.” Rose felt herself blushing, and she had a feeling neither Shanti nor Reyna had missed it. She covered as swiftly as she could.
“Well, Mr. Malfoy, I am in the middle of an important conversation at the moment, so I fear I’ll have to put you off.”
“No, no,” Reyna broke in with an evil smile. “That was all, really. Don’t refuse a dance on my account.”
“Or the supposed . . . business, either,” Shanti added with a smirk. Rose kicked her under the table.
“Very well,” she said. “If my friends insist.” And with a last glare at the pair of them snickering at her expense, Rose took Scorpius’s hand with all the dignity she could muster and let him lead her out onto the dance floor.
Scorpius Malfoy, Rose discovered, was a skilled dancer. But she was determined not to let that distract her, just as she was determined not to think about the weight of his hand on her waist or the fact that she probably had family members in the vicinity who might at any moment look over to see her dancing with Scorpius Malfoy.
“So, what was your business?” she asked. “So important that it interrupted another conversation?”
“My apologies for that,” Scorpius said with sincerity. “It was unpardonably rude. But in my defense, Miss Dharuna did wave me over.”
“She what?” Rose exclaimed, twisting in his arms to try and glare at Shanti, but she only managed halfway and settled for glowering in her general direction as Scorpius continued to lead her about the dance floor.
“I’ll admit, though, that I was looking for an excuse to ask you to dance,” Scorpius said then, chasing all thoughts of killing Shanti from her mind.
“You were?” Rose asked carefully.
“Yes,” he said amiably. “Miss Weasley, I hear you’ve been asking questions about me.” There was no change in his tone; he was as friendly as ever, but the very fact that he’d been made aware somehow of all her inquiries made a telltale heat rise in her cheeks.
“And what exactly have you heard?” she asked, playing it cool.
“That you and Miss Dharuna have been sending out letters to old schoolfellows, asking after my doings there. That you casually ask those you run into if they remember anything specific about me. That sort of thing.” He looked her in the eye with a smile. “Are these rumors true?” he asked, and Rose thought about being embarrassed for one moment, but then she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“Certainly they are,” she said without hesitation. “I did tell you last time I saw you that I was determined to solve your mystery.” Scorpius’s smile widened.
“You did indeed,” he said. “But you could have asked me these questions, you know.”
“I could have,” Rose agreed. “But I had a feeling you’d be less than forthright, given your delight in perpetual mysteriousness. I thought I’d have more success taking a different route.”
“I see. And I don’t suppose you’d tell me what you’ve learned?” There was a hint of a smirk, as if he’d guessed that she hadn’t learned much, so she decided to meet mystery with mystery.
“No,” she said. “For the time being, that will be my secret.”
“Then, at the very least, may I ask to what these questions tend?”
She had to smile at that, hearing words from her favorite novel inadvertently fall from his lips, and though she knew he wouldn’t recognize the text, she couldn’t help but answer in kind.
“Merely to the illustration of your character,” she quoted, reveling in a for-once private joke, but aware very suddenly how fitting the words still were. “I am trying to make it out.”
“And what is your success?” he said then, and Rose stopped short, frowning.
“Okay, that was weird,” she told him, and he quirked an eyebrow. “The first time could easily have been coincidence, but for you to continue word-for-word after my reply -”
“What, you quote Pride and Prejudice alone?” he asked, and then Rose truly was taken aback.
“You were quoting Pride and Prejudice?” she asked when she could manage words again.
“Why?” he asked with that glint in his eye that she was coming to hate. “Didn’t you recognize it? Your next line is supposed to be ‘I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.’”
She almost swatted him. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware,” she said, exasperated. “And of course I recognize it, but you’re one of the last people I’d expect to know the novel well enough to quote it back at me.”
“What, too girly a book for me to have read?” he asked with mock concern.
“Too Muggle a book,” she corrected.
“Well, okay, fair enough,” he said with an air of concession, though for the life of her, Rose couldn’t guess what he was conceding. “I do prefer the first draft, before the Ministry got a hold of it and censored it to death, but the Muggle version is good, too.”
“Okay, no,” Rose said flatly, and now she did actually stop in the middle of the dance floor.
“Rose,” Scorpius said glancing around, “the point of a dance floor is to keep moving. If we stop, we’re going to get in-”
“Pride and Prejudice is not about wizards.”
“Well, not the version you’ve read, no,” Scorpius said, taking her hand and pulling her back into the dance. Rose allowed this, but did not cease the argument.
“Not any version,” she insisted. “Pride and Prejudice is a Muggle classic.”
“Yes,” Scorpius said patiently, “and most of the world would agree with you on that. I agree with you on that. But before it became a Muggle classic, it was a story about gentlemen from pureblood Wizarding families who fell in love with girls from a half-blood family and had to choose between keeping their bloodlines pure or marrying for love. It was a brilliant piece of social commentary. Austen was a genius.”
“Jane Austen wasn’t a witch!” Rose insisted. “If she was a witch, we would have claimed her! We claim everyone.”
“No, you’re right. She wasn’t a witch. She was a Squib,” Scorpius said with a smile. “Which means that, in addition to being a brilliant piece of social commentary, Pride and Prejudice was also, if you’ll pardon the vernacular, a big ‘suck it’ to a Ministry who refused to acknowledge her existence. Like I said, genius.”
Rose stared at him, trying to determine if he was in earnest. Eventually, she said, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re making this up.”
“I can prove it,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, looking, as always, as if he was enjoying himself immensely.
“How?” Rose asked with narrowed eyes.
“I can show you the manuscript.”
“You have her manuscript?” Rose asked. “Jane Austen’s original Pride and Prejudice wizard version manuscript?”
“Well, not me personally, but the Department.”
“And you can show it to me? You’re allowed to do that?”
Scorpius hesitated for the slightest moment before saying, “There’s a loophole I can exploit.” Rose fixed him with a penetrating gaze, still trying to make out the man before her. “Do you want to see it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Rose said after a long pause. “But if this is some trick, I’m warning you-” He laughed.
“It’s not,” he promised. “But you have to say, ‘Unspeakable Malfoy, I want to see Jane Austen’s original manuscript of Pride and Prejudice.’”
“Why?” she asked warily.
“Do you want to see it or not?”
“Fine,” she said, agreeing to play along. “Unspeakable Malfoy, I want to see Jane Austen’s original manuscript of Pride and Prejudice.”
“Then let’s go,” he said, and started to lead her off the dance floor.
“What, now?” she asked. He gave her a little shrug, eyes twinkling away.
“Why not?” he asked.
Well, Rose could think of many reasons why not - it was after hours, it didn’t technically sound like something that was allowed, it would involve them leaving the Christmas party together when there were at least two people watching them like hawks, there was a very good chance someone related to her might notice - but somehow, despite all those reasons, Rose found herself saying, “All right, then,” and following Scorpius from the room.
They stood before the entrance to the Department of Mysteries moments later, Rose’s heart beating fast with the anticipation of seeing in person a place she’d only heard of in stories from her parents and aunt and uncle.
“Now, unfortunately, I’m going to have to blindfold you for a little bit,” Scorpius said.
“What? Why?” Rose asked. Scorpius grimaced slightly.
“It’s part of that loophole I mentioned earlier,” he said. “The gallery where the manuscript is stored is public access; anyone can request to see anything in there, and we have to take them. But they have to know what they’re looking for, and that it’s housed with us, and the gallery is in the middle of rooms that aren’t public access. So I have to blindfold you. Do you still want to see it?”
Rose narrowed her eyes and glared. “Yes,” she said. “But I will remain highly suspicious of you, if you don’t mind.” Scorpius laughed at that.
“Not at all,” he said, and conjured a blindfold.
The journey in the dark was not uncomfortable, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. Luckily, Scorpius, as he had been when he’d released her from the cursed parchment, was very good at being reassuring, and Rose found herself trusting him all over again. And finally, he stood behind her and untied the blindfold.
He’d called the room they were in now a gallery, but to Rose’s eye, it was much more like a storeroom or a warehouse. Scorpius left her seated at a long research table in the central aisle, and disappeared into the stacks. Rose looked around in shock, marveling at all the things contained in this place that no one seemed to know about.
And then Scorpius reappeared, levitating an old collection of parchment in front of him, which he carefully placed on the table in front of Rose. “That’s it?” Rose asked, breathlessly, but she didn’t need his confirmation, as written in elegant script on the front page was First Impressions by Jane Austen.
“Here,” Scorpius said softly, offering a pair of white cotton gloves to her.
“I can handle it?” she asked, taking them. At his nod, she very carefully and delicately turned the pages, reveling in the reality of what she was holding, catching lines and phrases here and there different from what she remembered.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Wizard in possession of fortune and lineage, must be in want of a pureblood wife.
“There were some very strong objections to the lady - a Muggle mother, and if that weren’t enough, it is rumored that one of the sisters is a Squib!”
And in one of her favorite scenes, “I might as well inquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason and even against your character? That you loved me in spite of my inferior blood, Muggle mother, and Squib sister? Was this not some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?”
And, “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your blood? - to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own? To introduce into the immaculate Darcy line, blood that has produced an unMagical child?”
She read in wonder, and finally, she tore her eyes away from the page. “This is . . . incredible,” she said. “I can’t believe. . .” She trailed off, not being able to put it into words. But he seemed to understand regardless.
“Happy Christmas, Rose,” he said softly. She shook her head in wonder, her gloved hand tracing the delicate pages with a reverence.
“I don’t have anything for you in return,” she said. “This . . . I wouldn’t even know how to match it.”
“Then it’s lucky that that’s not how gifts work. And besides, you have given me something.” Rose looked up at that.
“What?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Rose,” he said, sitting beside her and taking one of her gloved hands in a gesture that made Rose’s heart beat a little faster, “the sheer enthusiasm and appreciation that you have for the world around you . . . it’s incredible. And it’s heartening. That’s what you’ve given me. The opportunity to watch you experience this . . . believe me, that’s gift enough.”
Rose didn’t quite know what to say in the face of this declaration. She knew she was blushing furiously, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eye. She cast her eyes around for something else to focus on, and in the end, pointed randomly at a nearby shelf.
“So what’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what?” he replied, taking the change in topic in stride.
“This, over here,” she said, standing and crossing to the shelf and deciding to ask about an ornate golden spyglass. “I mean, if you bring me down here, you can’t expect me not to explore and ask questions.”
“No, you’re right,” he said with a smile. “I would be quite foolish to expect that.”
“So?” Rose prompted.
“That,” Scorpius said, joining her at the case, “is the Erised spyglass.”
“Erised as in Mirror of?” Rose asked.
“They go together, yes,” Scorpius said with a nod. “The spyglass allows a person to look in on someone else’s desire. If I stood in front of the Mirror, and you looked through this glass, you would see what I saw.”
Rose exhaled heavily. “That could be a powerful weapon,” she said. Scorpius gave her an unreadable look.
“Or a very significant gift,” he countered after a moment. He replaced the spyglass carefully on the shelf, and then Rose was off to ask about another item and another and another until nearly an hour had passed in this way. Then, they returned to the manuscript on the table, and with regret, Rose closed it and handed it to him.
“I suppose we ought to get back to the party,” she said softly.
“Probably, yes,” Scorpius agreed.
“Thank you, Scorpius. Truly.” He smiled.
“It was my pleasure, Miss Weasley.” He replaced her blindfold then, and led her out of the Department of Mysteries and back to the Christmas party and Shanti, who was waiting not-so-patiently for answers. “Until we meet again, then?” he asked as they stood in the doorway. Rose hesitated, then nodded.
“Until we meet again,” she confirmed, though with a slight pang of regret at the realization that she had no idea when that might be.
To Be Continued