One by one, rose petals drift from the treehouse far above the grass of the Potters’ back garden. Albus is far too old to be hiding in treehouses, but sometimes, he needs the solitude it offers. He risks his mother’s ire by mauling the blooms she cultivates without the use of magic, but he doesn’t care. He likes roses. They remind him of her.
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She hates the bloody things. Every year, without fail, someone gives her something that plastered with the scent, the colour, or the images of roses! They always think it’s clever because of her name, but she is a person, not a plant. But most of all, they remind Rose of him.
He loves them. –They’re nice,†he said to her once. –I’d much rather be associated with something beautiful and sweet than a dead man who used people like puppets as a means to an end.â€
It figures that he ignores the other side of roses. Thorns fit to draw blood are what remain after the flowers die off, far overshadowing the few months when they splay their gaudy plumage to the summer sun. They’re nice sometimes; for the most part, though, they are sharp and vindictive and unworthy of the attention they receive.
No, Rose thinks. Roses are ugly.
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As the remainder of the ravaged rose crumbles in his hand, Albus flicks his wand and sends another one skidding into his palm from the bush below. This one, though, he leaves undamaged. His finger traces the fragile peals of colour, thinking about the lips he would be hard-pressed to forget. They weren’t his for the taking and never will be, but he dreams of them nonetheless, and that one perfect, shining moment where he possessed them. To hell with the fallout afterward.
His kiss had surprised her, and the gall he mustered to kiss her surprised him equally. They are cousins, practically as close as siblings; lifelines, both in matters of academics, especially the heaving ball of stress that had been NEWT studies, and in emotional turmoil; and best friends (or at least they had been). He should’ve left it at that, but he hadn’t done much thinking before he’d done it.
Rose is an anchor and a confidante, not an object of lust, yet Albus finds himself frequently thinking of her in the dead of night, body taut with longing. He hates himself for it. It isn’t decent. Not because she’s his cousin, but because she trusted him with her most intimate secret and he had taken advantage of that.
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It is hard for Rose to think about, even two months after the fact, but it always lingers in the back of her mind. Billy Morrissey is a decent enough guy and was her first boyfriend. The girls at Hogwarts always talked about Billy, who was attractive, popular, and had a great sense of humour. It surprised Rose, as well as a fair few other people, when Billy asked her to the last Hogsmeade weekend of the year. Come to think of it, she can’t recall agreeing, though her rapid blinking and consequent giggling to her roommates later left it as an implied ‘yes’. But the most gorgeous boy in seventh year wanted her. Albus wasn’t as impressed, but she hadn’t expected he would be.
Sneaking off during a Hogsmeade outing is strictly forbidden, so, of course, nearly everyone does it. There is scant privacy to be had at the castle, so the nooks and crannies of the small village provide shelter to snoggers and miscreants alike. When Billy mentioned that he knew a quiet spot out past the stile at the edge of town, a flutter of anxiety tinged in anticipation blossomed in her belly. At the time, she didn’t think about what his invitation actually meant. When his hands went where she hadn’t expected them to go and began to work away her clothing, she reflexively recoiled, but Billy’s soothing words and tactful lips quieted her concerns, sweeping her away in a tide of hormones and unfamiliar sensations.
It wasn’t until later that night, after she hid beneath her bedcovers, that the gravity of what she had allowed hit her. During that ear-melting ‘talk’ every teenager has with a parent, Rose’s mother had told her that it’s meant to be something special to share with someone you love, someone you trust. She didn’t ‘love’ Billy; she barely knew him outside of the fact that he was a Hufflepuff in her year. Yet in a matter of only hours, that precious gift she was supposed to save for somebody important to her was discarded like a three-day-old newspaper.
She was angry then and still is now. Not at Billy, because she knows he would’ve stopped eventually if she’d held her ground, but at herself. And there was only one person she could bear to tell at the time, and that had been a mistake -- one she wishes she could un-do.
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It burns to think about the day she told him. Tears in her eyes, Rose wretched out her humiliation through staggered breath, but all he could think about at the time was how much he hated Billy Morrissey for taking something Albus would’ve happily died to possess. Morrissey was nothing to her, yet he had earned a rose that blooms only once and never again, an unequalled boon. And he treated this gift like it was nothing.
When he overheard Morrissey leaving Charms class the following Monday, joking about ‘pulling that red-haired Gryffindor girl’, Albus had lost it. Though not terribly gifted at hexes or curses, good old-fashioned rage made up for that as Albus launched himself at the other boy, beating him into the flagstones and the hospital wing. Detention for the rest of the year and an uncomfortable visit with his parents and the Headmistress were an acceptable price to pay for the pleasure he’d felt as Billy had sobbed for mercy.
When Rose found out, though, she had screeched at him, terrified that everyone would know what happened, what she had done. Seeing her distress had immobilised his better sense and made him shout back at her that she should’ve thought about that before shagging a git like Morrissey.
Then he kissed her.
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And she had slapped him for it. The thought of it makes her feel ashamed, and she can’t bear to look at Albus lest she see the hurt on his face that he’d had that day. Countless letters, begging for forgiveness, lie stuffed in a box under her bed, save for the single, magically preserved rose in front of her. He loves her, she knows, but she doesn’t love him like that. Maybe once he realises, Rose can think about other things while they are together and they can go back to normal . Whatever that may be.
With a stifled sob, she brings the rose to her lips and hopes.
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Albus crushes the flower in his hand and throws it into the dirt.
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