A Rose's Thorns

Chapter 29

It was good in a sense, that she had been kidnapped by them. She was the perfect spy, much more suitable to the post than even Severus Snape.

After all, no one expects the angel to set the world on fire.

Whether they knew it or not, personally, she felt that the light was worse than the darkness. She had observed with thickly veiled disgust at how most of the people in the Order of the Phoenix blindly obeyed Dumbledore's word and took it as a truth.

She remembered William Shakespeare's words in his play, The Merchant of Venice.

'There are a sort of men, whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond;

And do a wilful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;

As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!"'

The ugly truth was, light blinds you. It blinds you temporarily if you glance at it, and blinds you permanently if you stare at it for too long. But darkness- while it takes some time to adjust your eyes to the dark, at least you can see in it.

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To say that Rose had been clinging on to Bill ever since she was brought to the Longbottom Manor would be an understatement.

Whenever she met somebody new, she would quickly hide behind Bill and shyly peek at the newcomer.

Everybody thought her behaviour to be very cute and sweet. It fitted with the image they had believed on how the girl would grow up to be.

But truth be told, Rose was just pretending to act like Janice's eight-year-old sister, Jessica, and was quite surprised and pleased to note that her acting skills were brilliant. Well, she didn't mean to brag, but she had played the lead in nine of her school plays.

But even excluding her theatrics and pretending, she found that she genuinely enjoyed spending time with Bill Weasley. He was a hero -in a sense- and always made excuses on not having her talk to people whenever he felt that she looked uncomfortable. Not to mention, he had a wonderful sense of humour and the adventures he had while curse-breaking were quite exciting and entertaining to hear. Bill was truly a gifted story-teller. And on seeing that she had taken a liking with Bill, he had unofficially been designated as her guide/care keeper.

Fred and George, she liked. Period. In fact, she seriously wished she could tell them all that she had already claimed her family fortunes and that she was rich for the sole reason of offering to set up a joke-shop that the twins could manage.

For some reason, Rose found out that she could differentiate between the twins -something they, themselves were shocked about- and then there was the fact that Rose was also a prankster at heart. George and Fred had delightfully graced her with stories of their pranking adventures when she had asked, and she had also traded a few of her own stories of the pranks that she had played on Dudley and a few of her muggle friends. The twins had been very interested to hear the outcomes of the pranks she had played without the use of magic. Bill had slowly scooted away from the group after seeing how well the twins and she had gotten along, knowing that it spelt trouble.

Another person she got along spectacularly well was Charlie Weasley. He was one of the only people in the world, she felt, who would support her in the opinion that dragons were adorable and cuddly. Oh, how she longed to tell him about Snuffles and ask whether her treatment of the dragon was correct. Till now, the only knowledge she had on dragon care-taking were the ones that she had read from Draco's Care of Magical Creature's textbooks and a few other books about dragons. The books that she had found on dragons mostly contained information on how to contain and hurt them rather than to love and care for them, so till now, Rose had honestly been winging it.