The Bug Collector | marauders

A Betrayal So Small

When Rose was young her bed was small and the sheets had little white roses on them.

It had been their father's idea to name the three Evans girls after flowers, he even had each one tattooed on him.

He looked more like Petunia, she was the oldest, and his favorite. Petunia took it the hardest when he left, or when whatever may have happened to him, happened.

She'd always blamed it on Lily and Rose.

Blamed it on their magic. On coincidences.

—

Rose dreamed of her old bed often after the incident in the shrieking shack, she dreamed she was cowered under it, hiding from a snarling creature, the suffocating sounds of a thousand hissing snakes tried to drive her out from her safety, but they didn't frighten her.

"Rose." A human sounding voice called out from the room she hid in.

"Rose." Her father's voice called again, but the creature kept snarling.

Then, she'd shake herself awake, go have a cup of tea in the kitchens, or go sit with her plants in the greenhouses.

Currently, weeks and weeks had passed since it happened, the boys had all practically forgiven Sirius, not because they really forgave him, but because time had passed, and he at least tried to think up a solution.

James took the longest to come back around to Sirius, he gave him the silent treatment for what felt like weeks, but was really only days. Time just seemed to go by differently without James' voice.

When Sirius had first considered making bottle after bottle of wolfsbane potion(potion that allowed a werewolf to retain their human mind while transformed) for Remus he hadn't really considered how hard it would be, how expensive the ingredients were, and how long the whole process would take. Of course, the money really wasn't the issue, the potion itself was. He quickly learned he wouldn't be secretly making it and presenting to Remus as an apology. No, everyone was going to be involved in order for it to work.

And eventually, it did. He tried it the week before one of the last moons of the school year, and it worked. Rose joined them for that moon, but even after it worked, the dreams had done their damage, keeping her from returning with them again for the moment.

The group had always managed to do whatever crazy task they set their minds too, from changing all the portraits on the walls to have their faces, to making a map of the whole school and everybody in it, and now supplying their friend with wolfsbane potion.

During the time it took to figure it all out, back in their dorm, a single rose withered in a cup next on Remus' bedside table. It was the one Rose had left for him the morning after the incident. He kept that rose till all the petals had fallen away, and it was dried up, merely a dark green stem with a bulb at the top.

Eventually, he through it out.

—

Rose spent the rest of the school year studying, helping with the creation of the potion, and occasionally checking the map for where Regulus was. Sometimes she could consider bumping into him on "accident", but each time she couldn't do it.

As for Peter, they all knew he had a thing for divination, but the later in the year it got, the more it seemed like he was getting rather obsessed with it.

At least, that's what Rose blamed on the weirdest interaction she had with him in school up to this point.

—

June 30th 1977

Rose was working in the greenhouses, preparing to leave the plants for the summer, when the door creaked open, she turned and  looked behind her with a smile, sending a little wave to Peter as she pulled a weed up out of a large pot.

"Hi, Pete." She said, attention going back to her task at hand.

"Whatcha need?" She asked, taking her extra wand out of her pocket and tying up her hair with it.

She could hear him awkwardly shuffle a bit before finally standing still.

"I need to tell you something." He said.

Rose placed the weed she'd pulled up into a small bucket at her feet and wiped the dirt off her hands onto her skirt.

"Okay." She said, turning around to face him.

He seemed to struggle with the words at first, but eventually he said it.

"It was me, I started the rumor about you and Sirius at the start of the year." He said, biting at the inside of his cheek.

Rose leaned back a bit, legs hitting the table behind her.

"Sirius was so sure it couldn't have been one of you." She said, the hurt obvious in her voice.

"Why would you do that?" She asked

"Oh, you know why." He responded, looking away from her.

"Well that's not fair." She said. The hurt still there.

"I was in here, napping in one of the plants, I heard you talking, I swear I left before I saw anything. I thought you saw ME at first, but then you never mentioned it. I just I didn't want you to be with him, I thought if you realized what people might think, I thought you would stop. He doesn't really care about you Rose." He explained.

"Yes, he does. He could." Rose argued, firm in her belief of it.

"No, he doesn't." Peter said again.

"How do you know?" She asked, and he responded with a dull tone Rose hadn't heard from the boy before.

"I notice everything, Rose."

At first, she just looked at him then, she took in a sharp.

"I'm not gonna tell Sirius. You can tell him if you want, but I'm not going to do it. Let the lads know I'm going sit with Lily on the way home today. Don't expect a lot of owls from me over the summer, Peter." She said as she looked at the door, signaling for him to go.

"Alright, Rose." He said, before leaving as he was silently directed.

She got back to work.