The Red Rose That Has Green Thorns

I woke with a start, shooting upright in a flurry of flying covers. The chill air greeted my wet skin immediately, and I shivered involuntarily. I don’t know what it was that woke me up, I realized, but it had scared me somewhat.

“Was it the vision again?” I mused aloud softly, my voice echoing in the silence.

A rush of cold air made me shudder again, and a rattle drew my gaze to the left. I trembled again, and noticed that my window was wide open and clearly the source of the draftiness and chilliness. Puzzled, I swung my feet down to the cold stone floor and slowly stood up. The wind wasn’t really blowing, at least not very hard or very consistently, so it shouldn’t have been the reason my window was open. And I was pretty sure that it wasn’t Spunky come back to the real world again.

I stood uncertainly on the spot, examining the area for something - anything! - that would act as a sign to show me what was happening. After several long moments, I walked determinedly to the window, cold floor shocking me with its iciness at every step that I took.

Could it have been the window that woke me? Depending on how long it had been open, the coldness of the room could be due to the exposure of the freezing cold outdoors. If it had just burst violently open somehow, it would have slammed against the wall beside it and also caused me to wake.

Groaning in frustration, I placed my hands on the window sill and leaned out, searching the stone wall below and the dark skies for any signs of something amiss. I found nothing, so I stepped back and closed the window, only to yelp in pain. As is often a first reaction to injury, I stuck the wounded finger into my mouth. The coppery taste of blood exploded on my tongue and I wrinkled my nose in disgust, pulling my finger out to examine how badly I’d cut it. There was a thin line of blood already in the few seconds since I’d removed it from my mouth. As I looked on, a drip formed and began to roll down my finger and I hastily returned it to my mouth. I would rather have to taste the blood than see it, and in any case I wanted to see what had caused it before I clumsily healed it.

The culprit, it seemed, was what remained of the shattered lock of my window. The fact that it wasn’t windy at all left me increasingly confused and suspicious of the broken lock. What had happened, I wondered silently, to cause something like that to happen? Surely the lock wasn’t weakened by age or anything like that - it had seemed strong enough when it withstood a huge snowstorm recently, let alone just an occasional scattered breeze, like tonight.

“Rose?”

I jumped violently at the voice outside my door, and the knock that accompanied it.

“Rose, are you all right? I heard a loud noise, and then I heard you yelp…”

I crossed the room and opened the door to a worried looking Scorpius. I smiled softly at him, taking my finger from my mouth.

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “Something weird happened with my window, and I cut myself on the lock. It’s fine now.”

“Cut yourself…on the lock?” he asked, narrowing his eyes not in anger but in profound confusion as he leaned around me to peer into my room. He couldn’t come in, of course - enchantments of the same sort that kept boys from getting into girls’ dormitories in the Houses also prevented the Head Boy from entering the room of the Head Girl.

“Like I said, something weird happened with the window. The lock was broken and I hadn’t noticed yet, so I cut myself on the edge when I shut the window.”

I don’t know why I was only telling him half-truths, not really. Perhaps it was because I didn’t want to needlessly worry Scorpius, especially when I myself didn’t know what the problem was. I could tell, however, that he sensed there was more to it than what I had said, and the knowledge that he wouldn’t press me for what I withheld only made me feel guiltier about the whole thing.

“All right,” he said after a pause, “but you should come down to the common room. It’ll take a while for your room to warm back up, you know, and you need your rest for tomorrow.”

“Is it still going to be tomorrow, or later today…?” I asked absently, slipping into my room to retrieve my blanket, pillow, and wand. Before stepping back out of my room to where Scorpius anxiously awaited me on the stairs, I repaired the busted lock. I then turned, after glancing at the clock to affirm that it really was still just the night before the day of the second task. It was; the time was just past eleven in the evening.

I stepped out of the room and closed the door, giving a small smile to Scorpius in a weak attempt to assuage some of his anxiety.

“To the common room?” I suggested calmly, and after a brief moment he smiled slightly, taking my blanket, which was the bulk of what I carried, in one arm. With the hand he had free, he took the hand of mine that he had released by taking the blanket in his own and led the way.

We unceremoniously deposited the books that had lay on the couch onto the coffee table instead. For a while after we settled on the couch, we just sat there. Scorpius helped himself to half of my blanket for warmth - not that I particularly minded, because his body head made it warmer, too. I lay my head comfortably on his shoulder and he pulled the age-old stunt of placing his chin on top. Content, I quickly drifted back to sleep.

*

I woke up fairly rested the next morning, glancing at my watch to find that it was just past six in the morning. I disentangled my upper half from Scorpius’ upper half carefully, trying not to wake him, and once that was done I resorted to leaning forward gently and snatching up the nearest book from the coffee table. If I could find a useful spell at the last minute, I would be a happy camper. However, seeing as we still didn’t exactly know much about the task other than that rhyming would be a good thing to know, I wasn’t sure why we’d been looking so hard for spells in the first place.

Sighing, I flipped absently through the pages, Scorpius’ head drooping to my shoulder. I let myself reach up and play with his hair while I skimmed the charms listed in the book, running his silky hair between my fingers subconsciously. His breath fanned across my collar bone in the shallow pattern that he always had when he slept. I laughed quietly to myself, watching him sleep for a few minutes, before turning back and trying to find something - anything - that might possibly help in today’s task.