Elle!Fic | beautiful magic (tragic) love (1/1) | Scorpius/Rose, Scorpius/Lily Luna
Title: beautiful magic (tragic) love
Author/Creator: Elle, aka elle_blessing
Fandom: Harry Potter | Characters: Scorpius Malfoy/Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy/Lily Luna Potter
Word Count: 3,200
Rating: PG-13 | Warnings: Angst, sexual situations, a few swear words.
Summary: He made love to her in the soft grass on that isolated cliff overlooking the ocean. The stars were there to witness, like in all great romances (and tragedies). It was fitting. (Or Rose learns about (beautiful magic tragic) loving and living.)
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books are not mine. No money is being made.
Author’s Notes: This was written to fulfill a wish for darkrosefanfics at hp_humpdrabbles’ Humpfest 2013. I used her prompts "coming to terms with the past / moving on." The song "Sad Beautiful Tragic" by Taylor Swift was also an inspiration. It was too long to be posted at the community for the fest, unfortunately. Ah well. Hope you enjoy!!
In retrospect, Rose should have known it would all come to this. She should have paid closer attention, shouldn't have been so confident in the rightness of it all.
Scorpius + Rose = Perfect. Meant to be. Damn near destined.
It's what everyone had been saying since forever (If only for the irony since their fathers had always loathed each other, and wasn’t fate a bitch?), but especially after they started dating when they were fifteen. If you hear something often enough, you start to believe it, and if you’ve got no other reason to believe any different, and if everything seems to support that conclusion, it doesn’t make sense to argue with certain truth. Facts.
He was her best friend, after all. Scorpius was the reason she got her first howler (he liked trouble and she couldn’t say no to a dare), was who she took her first drink of firewhiskey with, who was in three-quarters of the photos from her Hogwarts photo albums. The first person she came to love outside her family. He was the person she shared her dreams with (to become a barrister and continue her mother's work towards equal rights for all magical beings), the person who she gave her first kisses to, her first touches to, whom she'd given all her firsts to.
‘Scorpius + Rose’ made sense.
It's what she believed in the years following their graduation from Hogwarts, too. It only seemed logical they would graduate, pursue their dreams, marry after they were both a bit more firmly established on their chosen paths. Have two point five children, a kneazle and some pygmy puffs.
But love wasn't logical, and it wasn’t really that neat and tidy, and it definitely didn’t always make sense. It was a lesson Rose learned much too late.
...
She enrolled at the University of London to study international political science and to no one’s surprise at all, finished her first degree in only two and a half years. But Rose needed more degrees, and legal training, and didn’t slow down at all. She applied and was accepted to the School of Law at Queen Mary at the University of London, and if her undergrad days kept her busy, law school kept her practically buried. Days and nights of studying, studying, studying, bled into each other. There wasn't time for more. For relationship building.
She thought Scorpius had understood. They’d laid underneath the stars on the quidditch pitch at school and talked about what they wanted to do with their lives. She talked and talked, full of dreams, of aspirations. Rose knows now, remembers more clearly now, that Scorpius just listened. That all he'd ever said for himself just the one time, was a very simple, “To be happy, Rosie. Seems to be all anyone can hope for.”
The truth of it was Scorpius hadn't been as sure of what he wanted to do. He didn't need to do anything, really. He was the sole heir of two large estates, after all, was sitting on enough money to support generations of his family to come. So he'd followed her to London. But Scorpius wasn't a city boy, wasn't a man who wanted to be in school for half a decade more. He wanted adventures, wanted her to come with him, wanted to tour the world. Experience everything he could. He was restless. Rose hadn't any patience for his idleness in London, wasn't willing to take time off to go with him, didn't understand his reasoning that she could put off school for a year, two, and get back to it. That it'd be waiting for her, that if she was with him it wasn't as if she needed to work at all.
Rose only saw idle, unmotivated, aimless Scorpius. She didn't see that he was waiting for her, trying to be there, trying whatever it took to make it work.
She didn't see how miserable he was.
The ironic thing was that he had understood. It was her that hadn't seen clearly, listened intently. Her that hadn't seen what was right in front of her.
...
They were different in more ways than they were alike. They did have one very notable thing in common, however, and that was their heated tempers. The things they bickered about in school, disagreed on, the things that just plain irritated and annoyed each other - the things that got their tempers flaring and blood flowing - these things were solved at sixteen and seventeen and eighteen by snogging each other senseless and getting up to things in broom closets that would earn them both howlers from their mothers, and probably death threats from her father, and maybe even an international incident if both their fathers got involved.
Those same things weren't solved so easily or quite the same one, two, three years after graduating, however. When life was real and arguments weren't fixed with a snog to shut the other up. When different dreams and no room for compromise led to Rose sitting in the library, at the cafe, hunched over her work well into the night, just glad that Scorpius had finally gone to sleep and the flat was blessedly quiet so she could focus. It led to Scorpius attending Weasley and Potter family affairs without her, making excuses for his girlfriend, and enjoying a bit of man time with James and Albus. (Because really, how could she possibly skip a study session before such an important exam? She was in law school. No one could expect her to stay out late when she had class in the morning.)
Rose had been relieved when Lily Luna started spending time at their home after she graduated from Hogwarts, was a bit aimless herself. It meant Rose could focus on her work and Scorpius would have someone to chatter with that wasn't her. When Scorpius had asked her to take a holiday with him to Egypt to tour the pyramids and curse breaker work sites (he was finally interested in something!), she'd suggested he drag her favorite cousin along instead. Rose remembered Lily expressing an interest in what their 'totally a ginger fox’ uncle had done before he settled down with aunt Fleur.
She had so much to do, after all. Exams. The bar was in a year. No time for frivolity.
Rose remembered him being disappointed at her suggesting he take Lily Luna instead.
He decided to visit all the major dragon reserves after that trip. After she turned down the trips to Romania and China, he stopped asking. Rose enjoyed living vicariously through the regular postcards Lily Luna sent. (Scorpius had never been much of a writer.)
...
What Rose remembered most clearly was when he came home from he and Lily Luna's month long sojourn to the Australian reserves (Almost a year after their first trip to Egypt... how had time passed so fast?) She had just finished her term finals, was giddy with the prospect of only having the bar exams until she could finally start living.
He took her to dinner at a pub she'd never been to in Cornwall. The food was fantastic, and she learned it was a regular haunt of he and her cousins. They went to the beach after, only a short walk to a small park, and sat and watched the summer sun take it's time disappearing over the horizon. She told him about everything she'd learned while he was gone, how excited she was that she was so close to having her law degree and finally being done, done, done with school. How excited she was to spend more time with him, like this, and at the pub with James and Albus and Hugo and Lily, and the others, too. She'd twined their fingers together, and Rose remembered how much she'd thought of the feel of his hand, strong and a little calloused now from the hard labour he'd done at the Perth Reserve.
Rose remembered how much she'd talked, how little he had said about his own adventures.
(“To be happy, Rosie. Seems to be all anyone can hope for.”)
She remembered how he kissed her and how her curly, wavy, too-long hair had whipped in the wind around them. She remembered how her heart had fluttered, and she remembered how long it'd been since she'd felt that, how long it'd been since she'd felt his lips at all.
He made love to her in the soft grass on that isolated cliff overlooking the ocean. It'd felt like they were seventeen again, sneaking out to the quidditch pitch at school, fumbling with each other's clothes under the moonlight. It felt like it'd been that long since his hands stripped her of her clothes, smoothed up her calves, thighs, over her hips. Since his lips had stolen her breath, licked the edge of her jaw, made her arch into his touch when he sucked at the sensitive flesh of her breasts, made her toes curl when his oh so clever mouth found the warmth between her legs and his nose nuzzled into damp curls.
He was thorough. Attentive. She’d forgotten that, and Rose remembered thinking that it was unacceptable how long they’d gone since coming together like this. She remembered thinking that now that the end was in sight, that this would be much more common. That Scorpius could stay home now and she would have a normal schedule, and they’d buy a bigger townhouse. Get married. Do those things couples do.
And then there hadn’t been much thinking at all. Just him above her, his eyes steady on hers as he filled her, a look in them she hadn’t been able to identify at the time, their breaths mixing between them. His pale hair was longer, but just as silky as ever when she had gripped it, lost herself to pleasure with his name on her lips.
The stars were there to witness, like in all great romances (and tragedies). It was fitting.
...
Afterward, Rose had been happy. Content. They had put their clothes back on and he'd taken them home to their small flat.
When she woke up the next morning, languid and rested for the first time in what felt like years, she was surprised to find him gone. Scorpius wasn't wont to be an early riser. (But then, he had gone and changed, had gotten used to waking with the dawn at the dragon reserves, and she found she didn't know much at all.)
Nothing was amiss, however, and so she did not worry. She remembered thinking he had probably gone to the cafe down the street to get croissants as he once had when they first moved in. She remembered looking forward to him returning, enjoying their breakfast, maybe making use of the kitchen table in the same way they had when they were nineteen and flushed with the daring of living on their own together.
She went to the loo, brushed her teeth, turned the coffee machine on. And then she saw the note. It said a lot of things, explained a lot of things, but all that really mattered was how it was signed.
I’ll always love you.
It wasn't until later that Rose realized nothing had seemed amiss because nothing really had been. The flat had long been empty of his presence.
Rose knew now that the night on the beach had been a goodbye. The look in his eyes, love and regret. Every touch, every kiss, every murmur against her skin had been a farewell. It was a bittersweet love song, if she was to be so sentimental. Which she wasn't normally, but now that it was over and she understood, Rose like to think she had learned something.
...
Seven months and twelve days after she found the note on her kitchen counter Rose overheard her mother and aunt Ginny talking, and she discovered Scorpius and Lily Luna had gone on their first date over the previous weekend.
She knew nothing had happened between Scorpius and Lily while they traveled together. Scorpius would never do that to her, and neither would Lily. That didn't mean the two hadn't become friends though, didn't discover how much they liked being around each other. The hardest part of it for Rose was that she'd encouraged the whole thing. That she'd seen how well they got on, how much they'd enjoy experiencing those kinds of adventures, and had been relieved to send them off together to occupy one another while she was busy with what she'd come to discover was something quite meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
They married thirteen months and twenty-six days after he left the note on her counter. Rose went to the wedding, but left before she could say something she didn't mean to either of them.
She could admit to herself now that she'd been more afraid of breaking down, crying until she didn't have any tears left, because she finally, finally understood what she'd missed, what she'd given up.
Scorpius had never looked happier, more thrilled, more smittenly in love. It was the same way he'd looked when they were young, when she'd agreed to steal their brooms from the Hogwarts broomshed and hare off to Hogsmeade under the light of the moon -- just to have a bloody butterbeer. Like she was the most amazing, exciting, wonderful person he'd ever known, and that he was so lucky she was his girl.
He hadn't looked at her like that since before graduating. No, he'd never looked at her quite like that. She gotten the love of a boy, but Lily Luna had captured the heart of the man.
Lily Luna was, of course, radiant. She was more petite than Rose, seemed to be particularly tiny next to him, but the look on her face was the same as his, like she'd found the person she couldn't wait to spend the rest of her life going on adventures with.
She didn't talk to Lily Luna for nearly two years when it was all said and done. It was unlike her, especially given the fact that it was completely unreasonable. Rose was a logical, reasonable person. She didn't let emotions get in the way. (But that had been the whole problem, hadn't it?)
...
Her papa held her while she cried four months after the wedding. He pet her hair, told her she was beautiful, that he loved her, that she was perfect the way she was. He told her she'd always be his baby girl no matter how smart she got or how accomplished she became.
He told her to never give up on her family, that you only got one, that you never knew when they wouldn't be there anymore.
That you couldn't wait a lifetime to clear the air, to say the things that needed saying.
He cried a little too. Told her about uncle Fred, how he'd not had the chance to say some things. Told her that when you love someone, you can't let anything get in the way.
He told her that when one door closes, another opens.
...
It was one year, ten months and fifteen days after learning of their first date when Rose showed up at their house at an hour she knew Scorpius wouldn't be home (It’d been easy to get Hugo and James and Albus to rope him into doing something stupid for old time’s sake).
She and Lily had always been close and it'd been terrible not to talk to her for so long. There was a reason, after all, that Lily Luna had come to Rose’s home after graduating from Hogwarts. They were the sisters the other never had. (And what did Rose do with her devotion, but to send her off with her at-the-time-idle-annoying boyfriend to gods knows where. As her papa often said, she had seriously needed to straighten out her priorities. Fortunately, she finally was getting the hang of it.)
There were tears. And then more tears. Confessions. Apologies. Love, love, love.
Lily Luna was pregnant. Rose felt the baby kick against her hand and felt the first stirring of joy in longer than she could remember.
...
It was two years, eight months and twenty-eight days after she found the goodbye note on her kitchen counter when Rose showed up at their house again. Lily Luna was due any day now. She was the kind of pregnant woman that glowed with it. Being pregnant made her more beautiful than she already was.
But Rose hadn't come for Lily. The petite woman had hugged her tight, or as tight as her protruding belly allowed, whispered her love as she always had (“I love you forever and ever, Rosie Posie”), and wandered outside with a large brimmed sunhat to tend to the garden. She could hear the ginger girl chatter with one of the house elves assisting her.
And then it'd been just her and Scorpius for the first time in forever. She couldn't say it'd been longer than she could remember because Rose didn't think she'd ever forget the last time they were alone on the beach in Cornwall. That memory used to hurt, slice deep, make her so angry she could burst, but these days it just made her slightly wistful. Sad for what could have been.
They talked for hours and Lily left them to it. Rose cried. He did too. When she stood to leave, finally, he hugged her and she clung to him. He smelled like wind and forest and adventure and her childhood. She shuddered.
"Go on an adventure," he murmured into her hair. "Be happy. Live, Rosie."
...
She did. Rose quit her job at a Muggle law firm working nine to five, threw out every pair of pantyhose she owned, and got a passport.
She went to Africa and the Middle East, and to China and Brazil and Mexico, and Japan, and worked at various wizarding non-profits throughout the world. She even started a few. She was part of teams that were instrumental in getting laws turned over that oppressed witches and banshees and elves, and werewolves and minotaurs.
Rose worked hard, but she played hard too. She made friends (and a few enemies). She met up with Scorpius and Lily and their son, Regulus, in the Cayman Islands just because she wanted to and not because there was work to be done there. (And wasn’t her cousin-nephew-whatever just the cutest with his strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and grey eyes? Grandmummy Narcissa Malfoy had to have had a fit over the hair color.)
Rose lived, and she was happy, even if it wasn’t how everyone thought it would be. No, instead it was ‘Scorpius + Lily = Disgustingly Cute’ and ‘Rose + Cormac McLaggen = Her Father Was Going to Kill Her When He Found Out That She’d Been Married for Five Months and Was Also Pregnant.’
Fate was funny like that. (Or a bitch. Rose had learned it was all about perspective.)
Author/Creator: Elle, aka elle_blessing
Fandom: Harry Potter | Characters: Scorpius Malfoy/Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy/Lily Luna Potter
Word Count: 3,200
Rating: PG-13 | Warnings: Angst, sexual situations, a few swear words.
Summary: He made love to her in the soft grass on that isolated cliff overlooking the ocean. The stars were there to witness, like in all great romances (and tragedies). It was fitting. (Or Rose learns about (beautiful magic tragic) loving and living.)
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books are not mine. No money is being made.
Author’s Notes: This was written to fulfill a wish for darkrosefanfics at hp_humpdrabbles’ Humpfest 2013. I used her prompts "coming to terms with the past / moving on." The song "Sad Beautiful Tragic" by Taylor Swift was also an inspiration. It was too long to be posted at the community for the fest, unfortunately. Ah well. Hope you enjoy!!
In retrospect, Rose should have known it would all come to this. She should have paid closer attention, shouldn't have been so confident in the rightness of it all.
Scorpius + Rose = Perfect. Meant to be. Damn near destined.
It's what everyone had been saying since forever (If only for the irony since their fathers had always loathed each other, and wasn’t fate a bitch?), but especially after they started dating when they were fifteen. If you hear something often enough, you start to believe it, and if you’ve got no other reason to believe any different, and if everything seems to support that conclusion, it doesn’t make sense to argue with certain truth. Facts.
He was her best friend, after all. Scorpius was the reason she got her first howler (he liked trouble and she couldn’t say no to a dare), was who she took her first drink of firewhiskey with, who was in three-quarters of the photos from her Hogwarts photo albums. The first person she came to love outside her family. He was the person she shared her dreams with (to become a barrister and continue her mother's work towards equal rights for all magical beings), the person who she gave her first kisses to, her first touches to, whom she'd given all her firsts to.
‘Scorpius + Rose’ made sense.
It's what she believed in the years following their graduation from Hogwarts, too. It only seemed logical they would graduate, pursue their dreams, marry after they were both a bit more firmly established on their chosen paths. Have two point five children, a kneazle and some pygmy puffs.
But love wasn't logical, and it wasn’t really that neat and tidy, and it definitely didn’t always make sense. It was a lesson Rose learned much too late.
...
She enrolled at the University of London to study international political science and to no one’s surprise at all, finished her first degree in only two and a half years. But Rose needed more degrees, and legal training, and didn’t slow down at all. She applied and was accepted to the School of Law at Queen Mary at the University of London, and if her undergrad days kept her busy, law school kept her practically buried. Days and nights of studying, studying, studying, bled into each other. There wasn't time for more. For relationship building.
She thought Scorpius had understood. They’d laid underneath the stars on the quidditch pitch at school and talked about what they wanted to do with their lives. She talked and talked, full of dreams, of aspirations. Rose knows now, remembers more clearly now, that Scorpius just listened. That all he'd ever said for himself just the one time, was a very simple, “To be happy, Rosie. Seems to be all anyone can hope for.”
The truth of it was Scorpius hadn't been as sure of what he wanted to do. He didn't need to do anything, really. He was the sole heir of two large estates, after all, was sitting on enough money to support generations of his family to come. So he'd followed her to London. But Scorpius wasn't a city boy, wasn't a man who wanted to be in school for half a decade more. He wanted adventures, wanted her to come with him, wanted to tour the world. Experience everything he could. He was restless. Rose hadn't any patience for his idleness in London, wasn't willing to take time off to go with him, didn't understand his reasoning that she could put off school for a year, two, and get back to it. That it'd be waiting for her, that if she was with him it wasn't as if she needed to work at all.
Rose only saw idle, unmotivated, aimless Scorpius. She didn't see that he was waiting for her, trying to be there, trying whatever it took to make it work.
She didn't see how miserable he was.
The ironic thing was that he had understood. It was her that hadn't seen clearly, listened intently. Her that hadn't seen what was right in front of her.
...
They were different in more ways than they were alike. They did have one very notable thing in common, however, and that was their heated tempers. The things they bickered about in school, disagreed on, the things that just plain irritated and annoyed each other - the things that got their tempers flaring and blood flowing - these things were solved at sixteen and seventeen and eighteen by snogging each other senseless and getting up to things in broom closets that would earn them both howlers from their mothers, and probably death threats from her father, and maybe even an international incident if both their fathers got involved.
Those same things weren't solved so easily or quite the same one, two, three years after graduating, however. When life was real and arguments weren't fixed with a snog to shut the other up. When different dreams and no room for compromise led to Rose sitting in the library, at the cafe, hunched over her work well into the night, just glad that Scorpius had finally gone to sleep and the flat was blessedly quiet so she could focus. It led to Scorpius attending Weasley and Potter family affairs without her, making excuses for his girlfriend, and enjoying a bit of man time with James and Albus. (Because really, how could she possibly skip a study session before such an important exam? She was in law school. No one could expect her to stay out late when she had class in the morning.)
Rose had been relieved when Lily Luna started spending time at their home after she graduated from Hogwarts, was a bit aimless herself. It meant Rose could focus on her work and Scorpius would have someone to chatter with that wasn't her. When Scorpius had asked her to take a holiday with him to Egypt to tour the pyramids and curse breaker work sites (he was finally interested in something!), she'd suggested he drag her favorite cousin along instead. Rose remembered Lily expressing an interest in what their 'totally a ginger fox’ uncle had done before he settled down with aunt Fleur.
She had so much to do, after all. Exams. The bar was in a year. No time for frivolity.
Rose remembered him being disappointed at her suggesting he take Lily Luna instead.
He decided to visit all the major dragon reserves after that trip. After she turned down the trips to Romania and China, he stopped asking. Rose enjoyed living vicariously through the regular postcards Lily Luna sent. (Scorpius had never been much of a writer.)
...
What Rose remembered most clearly was when he came home from he and Lily Luna's month long sojourn to the Australian reserves (Almost a year after their first trip to Egypt... how had time passed so fast?) She had just finished her term finals, was giddy with the prospect of only having the bar exams until she could finally start living.
He took her to dinner at a pub she'd never been to in Cornwall. The food was fantastic, and she learned it was a regular haunt of he and her cousins. They went to the beach after, only a short walk to a small park, and sat and watched the summer sun take it's time disappearing over the horizon. She told him about everything she'd learned while he was gone, how excited she was that she was so close to having her law degree and finally being done, done, done with school. How excited she was to spend more time with him, like this, and at the pub with James and Albus and Hugo and Lily, and the others, too. She'd twined their fingers together, and Rose remembered how much she'd thought of the feel of his hand, strong and a little calloused now from the hard labour he'd done at the Perth Reserve.
Rose remembered how much she'd talked, how little he had said about his own adventures.
(“To be happy, Rosie. Seems to be all anyone can hope for.”)
She remembered how he kissed her and how her curly, wavy, too-long hair had whipped in the wind around them. She remembered how her heart had fluttered, and she remembered how long it'd been since she'd felt that, how long it'd been since she'd felt his lips at all.
He made love to her in the soft grass on that isolated cliff overlooking the ocean. It'd felt like they were seventeen again, sneaking out to the quidditch pitch at school, fumbling with each other's clothes under the moonlight. It felt like it'd been that long since his hands stripped her of her clothes, smoothed up her calves, thighs, over her hips. Since his lips had stolen her breath, licked the edge of her jaw, made her arch into his touch when he sucked at the sensitive flesh of her breasts, made her toes curl when his oh so clever mouth found the warmth between her legs and his nose nuzzled into damp curls.
He was thorough. Attentive. She’d forgotten that, and Rose remembered thinking that it was unacceptable how long they’d gone since coming together like this. She remembered thinking that now that the end was in sight, that this would be much more common. That Scorpius could stay home now and she would have a normal schedule, and they’d buy a bigger townhouse. Get married. Do those things couples do.
And then there hadn’t been much thinking at all. Just him above her, his eyes steady on hers as he filled her, a look in them she hadn’t been able to identify at the time, their breaths mixing between them. His pale hair was longer, but just as silky as ever when she had gripped it, lost herself to pleasure with his name on her lips.
The stars were there to witness, like in all great romances (and tragedies). It was fitting.
...
Afterward, Rose had been happy. Content. They had put their clothes back on and he'd taken them home to their small flat.
When she woke up the next morning, languid and rested for the first time in what felt like years, she was surprised to find him gone. Scorpius wasn't wont to be an early riser. (But then, he had gone and changed, had gotten used to waking with the dawn at the dragon reserves, and she found she didn't know much at all.)
Nothing was amiss, however, and so she did not worry. She remembered thinking he had probably gone to the cafe down the street to get croissants as he once had when they first moved in. She remembered looking forward to him returning, enjoying their breakfast, maybe making use of the kitchen table in the same way they had when they were nineteen and flushed with the daring of living on their own together.
She went to the loo, brushed her teeth, turned the coffee machine on. And then she saw the note. It said a lot of things, explained a lot of things, but all that really mattered was how it was signed.
I’ll always love you.
It wasn't until later that Rose realized nothing had seemed amiss because nothing really had been. The flat had long been empty of his presence.
Rose knew now that the night on the beach had been a goodbye. The look in his eyes, love and regret. Every touch, every kiss, every murmur against her skin had been a farewell. It was a bittersweet love song, if she was to be so sentimental. Which she wasn't normally, but now that it was over and she understood, Rose like to think she had learned something.
...
Seven months and twelve days after she found the note on her kitchen counter Rose overheard her mother and aunt Ginny talking, and she discovered Scorpius and Lily Luna had gone on their first date over the previous weekend.
She knew nothing had happened between Scorpius and Lily while they traveled together. Scorpius would never do that to her, and neither would Lily. That didn't mean the two hadn't become friends though, didn't discover how much they liked being around each other. The hardest part of it for Rose was that she'd encouraged the whole thing. That she'd seen how well they got on, how much they'd enjoy experiencing those kinds of adventures, and had been relieved to send them off together to occupy one another while she was busy with what she'd come to discover was something quite meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
They married thirteen months and twenty-six days after he left the note on her counter. Rose went to the wedding, but left before she could say something she didn't mean to either of them.
She could admit to herself now that she'd been more afraid of breaking down, crying until she didn't have any tears left, because she finally, finally understood what she'd missed, what she'd given up.
Scorpius had never looked happier, more thrilled, more smittenly in love. It was the same way he'd looked when they were young, when she'd agreed to steal their brooms from the Hogwarts broomshed and hare off to Hogsmeade under the light of the moon -- just to have a bloody butterbeer. Like she was the most amazing, exciting, wonderful person he'd ever known, and that he was so lucky she was his girl.
He hadn't looked at her like that since before graduating. No, he'd never looked at her quite like that. She gotten the love of a boy, but Lily Luna had captured the heart of the man.
Lily Luna was, of course, radiant. She was more petite than Rose, seemed to be particularly tiny next to him, but the look on her face was the same as his, like she'd found the person she couldn't wait to spend the rest of her life going on adventures with.
She didn't talk to Lily Luna for nearly two years when it was all said and done. It was unlike her, especially given the fact that it was completely unreasonable. Rose was a logical, reasonable person. She didn't let emotions get in the way. (But that had been the whole problem, hadn't it?)
...
Her papa held her while she cried four months after the wedding. He pet her hair, told her she was beautiful, that he loved her, that she was perfect the way she was. He told her she'd always be his baby girl no matter how smart she got or how accomplished she became.
He told her to never give up on her family, that you only got one, that you never knew when they wouldn't be there anymore.
That you couldn't wait a lifetime to clear the air, to say the things that needed saying.
He cried a little too. Told her about uncle Fred, how he'd not had the chance to say some things. Told her that when you love someone, you can't let anything get in the way.
He told her that when one door closes, another opens.
...
It was one year, ten months and fifteen days after learning of their first date when Rose showed up at their house at an hour she knew Scorpius wouldn't be home (It’d been easy to get Hugo and James and Albus to rope him into doing something stupid for old time’s sake).
She and Lily had always been close and it'd been terrible not to talk to her for so long. There was a reason, after all, that Lily Luna had come to Rose’s home after graduating from Hogwarts. They were the sisters the other never had. (And what did Rose do with her devotion, but to send her off with her at-the-time-idle-annoying boyfriend to gods knows where. As her papa often said, she had seriously needed to straighten out her priorities. Fortunately, she finally was getting the hang of it.)
There were tears. And then more tears. Confessions. Apologies. Love, love, love.
Lily Luna was pregnant. Rose felt the baby kick against her hand and felt the first stirring of joy in longer than she could remember.
...
It was two years, eight months and twenty-eight days after she found the goodbye note on her kitchen counter when Rose showed up at their house again. Lily Luna was due any day now. She was the kind of pregnant woman that glowed with it. Being pregnant made her more beautiful than she already was.
But Rose hadn't come for Lily. The petite woman had hugged her tight, or as tight as her protruding belly allowed, whispered her love as she always had (“I love you forever and ever, Rosie Posie”), and wandered outside with a large brimmed sunhat to tend to the garden. She could hear the ginger girl chatter with one of the house elves assisting her.
And then it'd been just her and Scorpius for the first time in forever. She couldn't say it'd been longer than she could remember because Rose didn't think she'd ever forget the last time they were alone on the beach in Cornwall. That memory used to hurt, slice deep, make her so angry she could burst, but these days it just made her slightly wistful. Sad for what could have been.
They talked for hours and Lily left them to it. Rose cried. He did too. When she stood to leave, finally, he hugged her and she clung to him. He smelled like wind and forest and adventure and her childhood. She shuddered.
"Go on an adventure," he murmured into her hair. "Be happy. Live, Rosie."
...
She did. Rose quit her job at a Muggle law firm working nine to five, threw out every pair of pantyhose she owned, and got a passport.
She went to Africa and the Middle East, and to China and Brazil and Mexico, and Japan, and worked at various wizarding non-profits throughout the world. She even started a few. She was part of teams that were instrumental in getting laws turned over that oppressed witches and banshees and elves, and werewolves and minotaurs.
Rose worked hard, but she played hard too. She made friends (and a few enemies). She met up with Scorpius and Lily and their son, Regulus, in the Cayman Islands just because she wanted to and not because there was work to be done there. (And wasn’t her cousin-nephew-whatever just the cutest with his strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and grey eyes? Grandmummy Narcissa Malfoy had to have had a fit over the hair color.)
Rose lived, and she was happy, even if it wasn’t how everyone thought it would be. No, instead it was ‘Scorpius + Lily = Disgustingly Cute’ and ‘Rose + Cormac McLaggen = Her Father Was Going to Kill Her When He Found Out That She’d Been Married for Five Months and Was Also Pregnant.’
Fate was funny like that. (Or a bitch. Rose had learned it was all about perspective.)