The Red Rose That Has Green Thorns

“Nyah, nyah!” the little creature danced in front of me, teasing me, just out of reach. “You can’t catch me!”

“Why would I want to?” I asked it, stepping around a puddle of some sort of glowing orange secretion of the creature’s. “You’re slimy. And I have no idea what you just dripped out.”

“That? It’s pus. Poisonous, too. Wouldn’t touch it if I were you!”

“Oh, wow. You rhyme,” I mumbled sarcastically.

“Oh, yes, I can rhyme! And you won’t catch me in time!”

“In time for what?”

I followed the creature at a walk, avoiding the glowing orange, poisonous pus puddles. Say that five times fast…poisonous pus puddles, poisonous pus puddles, poisonous ups suddles, poisonous mud puddles, poisonous skunk bubbles…

“In time to save your friend from his untimely end!”

“What the hell is with your riddles?” I sighed, melancholic, and jumped a creek - which ran full of glowing orange (poisonous) pus.

“That’s for you to surmise, before your demise!”

“My demise?! Whoa, mister, you’re getting ahead of yourself. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ve got Al and Scorp to watch my back. Not to mention a hoard of crazy, rampaging cousins.”

“Cousins are nothing compared with the hunting!”

“Hunting?!”

“They’re coming for you, you’ll not make it through!”

The little creature cackled in delight, dancing ahead, remaining out of reach.

“Hey, wait!” I stumbled after him, nearly tripping face first into one of his puddles of poisonous secretions. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll have to think before you sink!”

“What?!”

“Don’t have time to cry, they’re on the fly!”

“Hey, wait! Don’t run off! Tell me what you mean by that!”

“You won’t make it out alive, because you’ll soon die!”

“Well, that makes sense…and it wasn’t quite a rhyme.. But how? Why?!”

“You’re in a lot of trouble since you’ve done burst the bubble!”

I shrieked in frustration as I leapt a puddle to catch up to the creature.

“Don’t blame me, it’s you they see!”

“What about my ‘friend’ and his ‘end’?!”

“I meant just what I said, soon he’ll be dead!”

“What? Who? Why? How?!”

“You’ll know when we get to the show!”

“Don’t - don’t tell me they’re going to make me watch it?!”

“Yup, so bottoms up!”

“I hate you!”

“I know you do, it’s true.”

“Your riddles make no sense! You should make them condense!” I cried desperately, the rhyme fully intended.

“I cannot condense what I say, you won’t understand anyway!”

I ran after the little thing into the woods, trying not to fall into his poisonous muck.

“Please, don’t leave me hanging!”

“It’s not you who is hanging, but the friend you should be saving!”

I was thoroughly confused, and tripped over a log. I almost landed in the orange goo, but the creature stopped and saved me.

“Now is not your time, living is not a crime.”

“I didn’t try to fall in it!” I protested.

“Even so, now you must go. You’re waking up, our time is up!”

“What?”

I woke up, groggy from staying up late to finish my essays for Defense. It was a lecture over Horcruxes - now a required subject, just in case. The rhyming dream…that was kind of weird. I wondered distantly whether it was how late I’d stayed up that caused me to have such an off-the-wall dream. I sighed, sat up, and rubbed my eyes. Glancing at my new watch, I stood up.

Yes, my new watch.

Scorpius had sent home money and asked his parents to find a good watch. The one I’d gotten for my seventeenth birthday (although the tradition was a primarily male one) had been broken completely beyond a simple Reparo in a Quidditch match with Hugh, Dad, and Uncle Viktor’s family - Bulgaria was one place we’d gone abroad to visit over the summer.

So, yeah. New watch from Scorpius, to ‘congratulate’ me on making the Exhibition team. I don’t see why he’d do that, since he had told me from the start that I was definitely in. Maybe to boost my confidence? But anyway, he hadn’t gotten anything for Al, so I assumed he was just a bit tired of me seizing his arm to look at his watch. The watch his parents had gotten for me was pretty, though. And probably pretty expensive, too.

Seriously. So pretty I tried to give it back all day yesterday because I knew it had to have been expensive. After all, it was silver, with delicate little designs of leaves and roses carved around it. Engraved on the backside of the watch face was my name, with a little engraved rose (how cliché!). There were vines, and thorns…I bet the price is something Grandmum and Granddad Weasley would still flinch at. I bet it’s double the highest they’d even consider paying for a watch.

It was only seven when I looked. I had an hour before my first class. Well, I would have if I hadn’t spent over five minutes thinking about the expensiveness of my watch.

I yawned, laughing at myself before gathering my clothes together and heading downstairs for my shower.

“Mornin’,” I said to Scorpius when I passed, yawning again as I headed into the bathroom. “I shouldn’t be long, if you’re waiting.”

He nodded, absorbed in another muggle novel of mine. It was The Catcher In The Rye, by J. D. Salinger. Good book. Not exactly the very, very best, but still an excellent piece of literature. I’d read it three or four times.

I closed the bathroom door behind me, still yawning and still groggy. I’d have to use my lunch hour to take a nap. There was something going on tonight? What was it…? It didn’t matter to me at the moment. I was too tired to give it much thought and I promptly climbed in the shower.

I ran through the normal routine - washing my hair and everywhere else and all that. Then I stood for maybe five minutes just letting the warm water run over me to soothe all the kinks and whatnot from my muscles.

I got out then, dried off, and dried my hair. Next, I changed into my button up white shirt and the skirt - the ancient Hogwarts uniform. Seriously, Mum and Aunt Ginny had to war the same thing when they came to Hogwarts. I’ve seen them, and I’m really surprised they didn’t try to get us girls (A.K.A. Lily and I) to re-wear them.

“Okay, Rose,” I said to myself with a slight chuckle, “you’re being crazy. And random.”

I shook my head and used a nifty hair charm to remove the bit of frizz and leave my curls nice, and sleek. After that, another random thought crossed my head and caused me to chuckle again. Normally when my thoughts are random, or when I space out and think about the same thing for a long period of time, there’s something important going on soon that I have totally forgotten.

I paused. I gasped.

I screamed.