The Red Rose That Has Green Thorns

Olivia tried to score on me, and I caught it on the tips of my fingers and tossed it back in to Peter, who streaked off up the field. Thirty to nothing soon followed, and it raised my hopes of a victory by a nice margin. I couldn’t be bothered by the seekers (who, as much as I said I ‘couldn’t be bothered by‘ them, were still circling the pitch searching for snitch), and the beaters (on my side, at any rate) were obviously doing their jobs quite nicely, since I was still in commission, and so were all of the chasers of my team (and the other team, for that matter).

And once more, Olivia had the Quaffle, then passed to Molly, who passed to John, who rolled to avoid Hugh’s bludger - if only narrowly - and passed back to Molly. The Ravenclaw chasers then formed into a v-formation and came straight for me, only to be scattered by Fred’s bludger. It took me a moment to relocate the Quaffle - Molly had done just as Albus had earlier and passed off to Olivia, who was closing the gap between my goals and herself rapidly.

Determined as I was to not let a goal pass, I circled in front of my hoops in my ready position, searching for any signs of fake-outs or shots. So far, it was a no-go. I couldn’t detect any of the early signs of her actions, but I still had time.

I deflected her shot a few moments later, sending the Quaffle sailing to Lily, who passed immediately to Peter, who soon passed to Al. And my chasers then truly started to show their stuff, as well as my beaters. My little brother took out John Marcum - although he did allow himself to feel guilty enough to catch the older boy as he fell. Fred nearly unseated his little sister, and Aunt Angelina looked kind of mad about that, so I knew he’d get a talking to later, even though she knew how competitive all of us were when it came to our sport.

“Rose!”

The shout from my younger brother, who had just pulled up from depositing John Marcum onto the stretcher awaiting him, came too late. I felt a crunch as a bludger from behind rocketed into my shoulder. It wasn’t a foul, because it wasn’t the Ravenclaw beaters who had hit it, but that didn’t stop the damn thing from hurting like hell. I pulled my broom to a stop, the force of the bludger crushing my shoulder having sent me spinning a ways away from my posts, and returned to my place.

“And that was a nasty blow from a bludger there, and Rose must be feeling that one by now!” Leanne called over a groan from the Gryffindors. “Yet, as we’ve come to expect from her, she’s kept her game face on and is facing the approaching Ravenclaw chasers with determination - smashed shoulder or not, Rose Weasley wants a win for Gryffindor this year!”

As I halfway listened in to Leanne’s commentary, I kept my eye on Olivia (who had caught Al’s dropped pass when Hugo had shouted his late warning), and knew the second before she passed that she was passing to Molly. I allowed a glance to see that John was being revived, but if it really worried Olivia that he’d be out for a few minutes she would’ve called a timeout - which she didn’t - so I refocused my attention on Molly as she entered the scoring zone.

She passed to Olivia, who tried a quick shot at my right hoop. I was out of arms reach, but I swung myself around and managed to hit the Quaffle away with the tail end of my broom. I slid sideways a bit, but righted myself as Lily passed to Peter and they were on their way back to face Ravenclaw’s keeper. I threw my head to the side, to get my hair out of my face, and watched the game, tuning in to Leanne’s commentary.

“And with this - no, he’s missed, and it’s Ravenclaw in possession. Gryffindor still in the lead, forty to nil, and Albus Potter’s just stolen the Quaffle back! Gryffindor’s in excellent form today!”

Other than my shoulder, I couldn’t help but think humorlessly. We were still up, obviously, but I wasn’t sure whether I could keep up this game’s flawless record for much longer with my shoulder being as it was. It was then that I saw Nat flatten herself against her broom and go into a steep climb, Louis far beneath her, as he’d been on the opposite side of the pitch.

“And the seekers are moving! Could they have sighted the Golden Snitch, and only fifteen minutes in?!”

“Remember the chasers, Leanne,” Professor Platt’s voice reminded her.

“Oh, right. It’s Potter in possession, who passes to Potter, who…yes, Albus Potter scores! Fifty-nil, Gryffindor! And now it’s John Marcum with the Quaffle - that nasty bloody nose and the bruise is courtesy of Hugo Weasley - now it’s Weasley, Wood, Marcum, Weasley, Marcum, Wood - Potter! Gryffindor intercepts, and - yes, he’s done it again! Well done, Albus, sixty up to Gryffindor!”

I allowed another glance at Natalie and Louis, who were still shooting up - straight up - and I saw a small glint before the small golden ball went into the clouds. Natalie was still ahead by a good margin, but still had a Firebolt, which was still a good broom but nearing the tail-end of its glory days. Louis had a newer model of the Nimbus, the Nimbus Storm, which was a good deal faster. He was gaining on Natalie bit by bit. Leanne’s commentary broke through my thoughts just then, warning me that John Marcum was once more in possession at midfield, and I focused once more on my duty as keeper - making sure the other chasers didn’t score.

The funny thing about everything that had happened since the seekers began their ascent was that barely two minutes had passed - and for such a steep, high-speed climb, two minutes was a large chunk of time. Leanne lapsed into her own rendition of my thoughts, until Professor Platt reminded her of the chasers just as I - foolishly - blocked Molly’s shot with my injured arm. I don’t even really know how I managed to move that arm - I think I may have spun my broom quick enough to flap the limb out a bit, and the palm of my hand smacked the Quaffle away, if not very far. Al sped to reach it before Olivia, and threw a long pass to his sister halfway down the field.

Five more minutes passed, the seekers still chasing the snitch but now in a descent, and Gryffindor was still up, now by 90. John Marcum had once again been unseated, and this time seemed out of the game for good - he hadn’t been reawakened and it had been a good three minutes since his second knockout, which had been caused by Fred.

“There, Gryffindor seeker Natalie Trebond reaches out her arm, in the hopes of catching that ever-elusive Golden Snitch! She had so much of a head start in the beginning that Louis Weasley can’t catch up - and there it is! Gryffindor wins, by two hundred and forty points! What a game!” Leanne was dancing around excitedly on her podium. I couldn’t help but laugh, and a cheer went up from the Gryffindors while a loud groan emitted from the blue and bronze section of the stands.

“Go, go, Gryffindor! Go, go, Gryffindor!” seemed to be the chant, but I knew it could have also been ‘you can score, Gryffindor!’ because it had been before.

I let myself have a ‘YES!!’ fist pump before flying to the huddle that was my team, a wide grin on my cheeks as I was embraced - that is, before I hissed in pain and remembered the injured shoulder that I had somehow forgotten. “Careful,” I said when Lily looked at me worriedly. “Shoulder.”

“Let’s have a look,” Al said, as the team made their way to the changing rooms. “Lily, why don’t you go fetch Madam Pomfrey?”

“Hugh’s already got that taken care of,” Fred chimed in.

At the moment, it seemed like my cousins were the only ones with me, but Natalie and Peter still walked with the team, Natalie looking at me concernedly. I flashed a grin, which may have been turned into a grimace when Al poked my shoulder.

“Albus Potter!” I hissed. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, poking it?!”

“So it does hurt!” He said, grinning sheepishly. “Ah, well, you’ve had worse. We’ve all had worse, to tell the truth.”

“Speaking of the shoulder,” Fred said, looking at his toes, “sorry I didn’t get there. I was watching the bludger nearest the chasers and hadn’t seen the other one.”

“S’okay,” I said, chuckling a little, “Like Al said, we’ve all had worse.”

By now, we had made it back to the changing rooms, and I had taken off my Quidditch robes, revealing the spaghetti strap shirt and shorts underneath. Lily and Natalie let out little gasps, noises of concern, and Al winced in sympathy. Fred’s face twisted into a look of disgust, and Peter just looked on with a calm, if slightly pitying, gaze.

My whole left shoulder was splotchy with multicolored bruises - it was in varying shades of purple, brown, green, blue, and yellow. There was a small bit of smeared and dried blood, where a bone fragment was poking out through the skin slightly. All in all, it wasn’t a pretty picture. Lily looked as though she would puke.

“Rose?” a voice said from outside the door.

“Come on in, Scorp,” Al called, leaning closer to inspect the injury. I would let him heal it, since I trusted him and his secret studies for being a Healer, but I knew he would rather observe a trained professional for future reference. The door opened at Al’s words, and Scorpius, obviously, walked in. “It’s got a pretty nasty looking bruise, come check it out.”

I couldn’t help but laugh and roll my eyes at my cousin’s enthusiasm to my gruesome injury. Painful or no, it was still a pretty neat bruise to show off.

“Bloody hell, Rose,” Scorpius said, in a slightly harsh voice. “And you let it set the whole game?”

“What d’you mean the ‘whole game’?” I asked, wincing as Al gently prodded. “It only lasted twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

“And you got hit twelve minutes in!” Scorpius retorted.

“See? It’s not the ‘whole game’. It was only around half of it.”

“Rose.” He took on his scolding tone.

“All right, all right, Dad,” I rolled my eyes, but flashed a grin at him to show him I was only joking. He still had a stern look, and I merely shrugged my uninjured shoulder at him.

“Where is she, where is she?” a new person came bursting into the room. Al stepped back hastily as Madam Pomfrey swept in, Hugo trailing her, looking at me apologetically. I just stuck my tongue out at him. He was thinking it was his fault, but it wasn’t - not really. If I’d been paying good enough attention, I would’ve heard it hurtling through the air.

Madam Pomfrey tut-tutted as she roved around, examining the injury from every angle humanly possible. She tapped it with her wand with a muttered spell, most likely checking how bad it was, and tut-tutted again.

“You Weasleys!” she finally blurted. “Always leaving things until the last moment, aren’t you? You can’t call a godforsaken timeout when you need fixing up - no, you’ve got to play through to the end, don’t you?”

I grinned at her and asked, “Would I be a Weasley if I wasn’t difficult?”

Despite the situation, my cousins all laughed, and my brother, Scorpius, Natalie, and Peter, all snorted.

“Touché,” Madam Pomfrey said tartly. “Now, up to the Hospital Wing with you, I need a closer look at it.”

I groaned, but did as she said.

It was lucky my shoulder healed nicely, because I’d nearly forgotten that the following Tuesday was the first Triwizard Task. What we would be doing, I had no clue, but today, Sunday, as I got out of the Hospital Wing, I realized that Scorpius and I should brush up on some charms and jinxes and other things. I turned promptly - I had been on my way to lunch, but the library could provide a few spell books that I wasn’t sure whether the dorm had or not.

About ten minutes later, arms laden with six large spell books that I’d just checked out, I made my way down to the Great Hall, where, immediately upon entering, I spotted Scorpius sitting near me and conversing with Demetri and Joe. A bit farther up the table, Andy and Carl had their heads together, conversing in low tones.

“Scorpius!” I said, letting the books thud onto the table loudly as I flopped beside him and pulled a few random foodstuffs onto my plate. “We’ve got some work to do.”

“I thought we’d finished all the essays…?” he asked confusedly, seemingly unaffected by my sudden appearance. “I see she’s let you out of the Hospital Wing. I figured she’d keep you another night.”

“Nope, all healed,” I said, rolling my shoulder to emphasize my point. “And we have finished the essays, unless we’ve forgotten one or two. It wasn’t those I was referring to. You forget, my handsome and intelligent partner, that we have a Triwizard task in two days and we haven’t done anything to prepare.”

My ears grew slightly warm when I realized I called him ‘handsome’ before I said intelligent, but with my slightly playful and slightly no-nonsense tone, I hoped he’d overlook it.

“Merlin’s beard,” he pulled the ever-famous face palm. “How could I have forgotten? You’re the forgetful one!” he pointed an accusatory finger at me, and I put up my hands in mock surrender, a chicken leg in one, a bite of it still hanging slightly from my mouth, and my pumpkin juice in the other. He snorted before turning away to compose himself, and I managed to swallow my chicken.

“My forgetfulness is contagious,” I said casually, taking a swig of my juice before setting it down.

“Nah, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“No, no, no!” I muttered distractedly. “Why would I need to know a hex that would give someone a tail?”

“Let me see that one,” Scorpius said, pulling my book nearer, “I’d like to see what Alexander Boyd looks like with a tail. Or maybe I’ll turn him into a ferret, like the Moody-imposter did to my father back in the day.”

I snorted. “I figured you’d take offense to that, being as it was your father.”

“Yeah, well, my dad was a right little git back then, so I don’t mind. Appendio? What kind of spell is that? Is it supposed to be like ‘appendage’ since it is, after all, talking about adding a tail?”

“Dunno,” I said, pulling the spell book back toward myself, “but I’m looking through this one, if you don’t mind. Go back to looking in yours!”

“What about Elastasis?”

“Well, what’s it do?”

“Basically, from the description, makes things have elastic qualities. Here, let’s try it to see. Elastasis!”

He pointed his wand at the edge of our little balcony, and a two-foot section of the rail slowly drooped a bit. We walked over to examine it, sharing a wordless glance, and I reached out and pulled on it. The wood - for it still looked like wood - did have the qualities of elastic. It stretched, and as a joke, I conjured a rock and shot it from the rail like a slingshot (making sure, of course, not to damage anything).

“That one might come in handy,” I said, shrugging. “Does it have a spell for the reversal? Something like Elasti-gone?”

It was a joke, really, but I pointed my wand when I said it, and the rail returned to normal. I snorted, and Scorpius laughed as I said, “I really was joking.”

“I know,” Scorpius said, slightly breathless, “but the fact that the reversal was something so simple…haha…”

I rolled my eyes, pulling another spell book toward myself and scanning the index. I rubbed my tired eyes, glancing at my watch - it proclaimed that it was eleven thirty at night already, and I groaned inwardly. I’d have fun in classes tomorrow.

An hour later, and we’d compiled a list of thirty or so hexes, spells, jinxes, charms, and even curses that might somehow be useful.

“Should we work on these tonight…?” I asked, looking at the list, “So we can sleep tomorrow night and be well rested on Tuesday…or should we go to sleep now so we can stay awake in class tomorrow…?”

“I think…” he yawned, “I think that we should go ahead and practice some on them tonight. I know you - you’ll be awake in class even if you have to curse your eyelids off.”

I chuckled, “And you’re not the same way?”

“If it was between a lecture and a few points and my eyelids…I’d rather keep my eyelids.”

The next day dragged on and on, the two of us only having gotten two hours of sleep, and when classes and meals were over, I told Lily to continue with patrols as normal, and asked her and Zack to cover where Scorpius and I usually patrolled, because we were exhausted.

“And, Lily,” I said, before she left, “Don’t you want a Hogwarts victory?”

She grinned, and walked down the Prefect’s table to Zack, squeezing in by him, fearlessly across from a scowling Alexander Boyd, and turned to talk to her patrol partner.

After that, Scorpius and I dragged our way upstairs, and didn’t even make it to our dorm rooms to change. I collapsed across the couch, and Scorpius landed himself spread-eagle in an armchair.

“We should really…practice some more,” he said, having to pause in the middle for a yawn.

“We will…after our ‘nap’…” I replied, snuggling into the couch for comfort.

“Yeah…yeah, I like that idea.” He agreed, groggily.

“I don’t have much to say, but good luck in the event today!”

“If you don’t have much to say,” I groaned, vaguely taking in the clearing that I’d seen only once when Spunky had thanked me. “Then why bother?”

“I just wanted to wish you luck, and don’t forget to duck!”

“Duck?” I asked, but there was no reply.

I woke up not long after the short episode with Spunky, still wondering why I would need to remember to ‘duck’ and whether it would kill me if I didn’t. I know it was a bit of a morbid thought, but I was still slightly tired, and when I peered at my watch I saw it was four thirty in the morning. Sighing, I stood and kicked Scorpius’ foot.

“Wake--” I yawned. “--up, Scorp. Let’s practice some more.”

He mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “Five more minutes, Mum?”

“I am not your mother and no, you’re not getting five more minutes because I’m already awake,” I said, rubbing my eyes as I searched my pockets for my wand - before spotting it on the floor by the couch.

“What time is it, Rose?” He grumbled, sitting up and stretching.

“Four thirty.”

“And you woke me up?” he asked in disbelief.

“Obviously, or you’d still be snoring.”

“I don’t snore,” he said, then asked, “do I?”

“No,” I rolled my eyes, picking up my wand, “but we really do need to get some practice in. We can’t do extra this morning because we need showers and there’s the Prefect meeting.”

“I’m sure they’d understand if we missed the meeting,” he said, searching his own pockets and successfully coming out with his wand in his left hand. An interesting fact about Scorpius is that he’s ambidextrous, and uses his wand and beater’s bat just as much with his left hand as he does with his right.

“But as Head Boy and Girl, we will not miss the meeting,” I said firmly.

“All right, all right, Mum.”

“That’s my line,” I retorted jokingly, conjuring a few pillows and other things for our practice.

“Yeah, yeah,” Scorpius said, chuckling. “Let’s just get this practice done, right?”

“As long was we’re doing something,” I replied, gripping my wand firmly in my right hand and summoning our list. “Let’s start with…”