Rose never would have admitted it to anyone except her boyfriend and maybe her cousin Albus, but family Saturdays at the Burrow were really one of her favourite ways to spend her time. She hadn't properly appreciated them when she was younger, but now that they were significantly less frequent, she was grateful for them. She rarely got to see most of her aunts and uncles outside of them, and she often found it difficult to coordinate her schedule with that of most of her cousins, even the ones she considered herself close to.
She saw Albus on a regular basis because he was Albus. She saw Lucy because they shared a flat on the outskirts of Northern London. And she saw Victoire and James at work.
And often, for weeks at a time, that was it.
Even when she was just sitting alone by the window in her grandparents' living room, watching Fred bewitch snowballs to pelt Molly in the back of the head no matter what direction she was looking in, there was a sense of togetherness that she could never seem to find anywhere else.
There was just something about being in her grandparents' house that made any other problems she had melt away.
"Hey." She looked up just as Albus dropped onto the window seat across from her. His nose was still red from being outside, and there were flakes of snow clinging to his dark red hair. "Watching Fred?" She nodded, and he grinned broadly. "She's going to hex him to next Friday soon."
"I don't doubt it." She cocked her head to the side. "How have you been? I haven't seen you much in the last couple weeks."
His smile faded, and he slouched against the wall behind him. "The Aurors decided I was ready to move onto occlumency training, and it's a nightmare. I'm rubbish at it. And sometimes they have us practise our legilimency on each other, which is even better." He made a disgusted face, and Rose refrained from pointing out that wanting to keep his not-quite-girlfriend out of his mind should be good incentive; she knew Albus didn't work that way. "That's always fun. Then after work, it's always, 'Al, you never told me that-'" He broke off and sighed. "Anyway. That's why you haven't seen me. How's stuff with you?"
She shrugged. "Oh, you know. I've got a couple of nicks and bruises, but they've still got me on a tight leash - they haven't let me near anything more interesting than a grindylow." He didn't look very sympathetic, and she supposed she couldn't blame him; when she'd joined the Bureau for the Control of Dangerous Creatures, they'd told her she'd have four months of training and that once she'd completed that, they would ease her into real field work. They'd kept their word; it was January, and she suspected they'd boost her up to a real XXXX creature in a matter of weeks.
Albus, on the other hand, had to go through another two and a half years of training to be a fully-fledged Auror, and he couldn't expect to go into the field until his third year of training.
He was beginning to look a little annoyed, so Rose directed her gaze across the room and changed the subject. "Remember when those two hated each other?" she asked.
Her cousin followed her line of vision to where his brother was sitting with her boyfriend. From the animated hand gestures and occasional loud exclamations, they had to be talking about either Quidditch or Healing. Ever since his first trip to St. Mungo's since joining the BCDC the year before, James had developed a keen interest in Healing.
"Well, I don't have the patience to do it," he'd said when she teased him about quitting the Ministry and starting in on Healer training instead. "I just think it's interesting. I mean, they can really repair the human body. It makes me a lot less nervous about being reckless!"
Given how little concern James had ever showed for his safety, Rose was still a little worried about what "a lot less nervous" meant.
Albus snorted as he slouched against the wall and rested his feet on her seat. "Yeah, well, you used to hate him, too."
Rose made a face. "Shut up." Just as she was about to look away from them, Scorpius glanced up. When he saw her eyes on him, he grinned at her. She smiled back and blew him a kiss, and his grin turned into a smirk as he looked back at James.
"You know, I thought he'd get over being pleased with himself for going out with you eventually," Albus remarked offhandedly. She glanced over at him; he was looking out the window again. Molly had finally tired of Fred's antics and had her wand out, and Fred was dodging her snowballs with only limited success. "It's been more than three years, though, and I'm starting to think it's not going to happen."
"Well, I'm pretty great." Rose put her feet up next to him. "Can you blame him?"
Albus rolled his eyes. "Yes. Yes, I can. Unlike my best friend, I can see how obnoxious you are."
"Oh, he does, don't worry." Rose glanced back out the window. Fred had snow in his hair, but he appeared to have rallied with a cheering charm; Molly was now struggling to stop laughing long enough to lift it. "He just forgives me for it."
"How've things been between you and Scorpius?" Albus asked. "I've barely talked to him, either. I'm turning into a hermit."
Rose suspected that this might have at least as much to do with his girl issues as his training, but she'd long since learned not to press Albus too much on the topic. He'd talk when he was ready to.
"Good. Or, I think it is, anyway. It's hard to be sure with him sometimes."
Albus sighed. "He's just a little worried about you starting to do fieldwork. He knows how often BCDC members are in and out of St. Mungo's, and it's hard for him to think about his boss interrupting his day to tell him that you've been carted in there."
Rose had been trying very hard not to think about that; it was a conversation that both she and Scorpius had been pointedly avoiding, though she knew that as a Healer trainee it was definitely starting to weigh on him. There wasn't really much she could do about it, though, other than try to keep herself out of St. Mungo's in the first place.
"I know." She winked at Albus. "But I make it worth his while."
Albus recoiled. "Ew." He changed the subject, and inwardly, she heaved a sigh of relief that she'd managed to deflect the conversation for a little longer.
Rose was good at avoiding things she didn't want to deal with. According to Albus, it would catch up with her eventually, but she doubted that: it was her experience that when you avoided problems for long enough, they just went away.
Al had barely vacated his spot when Victoire took his place. "Hey, Rosie," she said. "Long time no see."
"It's been a full 24 hours and everything."
Her cousin grinned. "Look, I wanted to touch base on something. They'll be deciding on fieldwork assignments soon - no, I still can't give you a day, stop asking - and I wanted to ask whether you were interested in being put with me."
Rose sat bolt upright and studied Victoire's face. She didn't think that the other woman was joking. "Wait, what? Yes, of course, I -"
Victoire held up her hand. "No, I want you to think about it - tell me on Monday. I'm not switching partners for you, so it'd be with us both, and - I mean, we know each other really well, and it's not always the easiest dynamic to fit into."
"So it'd be you and Dedworth?"
The corner of her cousin's mouth twitched. "You need to start just using his first name, but yes."
"Okay," Rose said. "I - I'll tell you." Privately, she still didn't see what there was to think about, but she was willing to pretend she was.
Dinner was predictably good; she had the chance to catch up with Louis, who she'd always gotten on well with but hadn't really had the opportunity to talk to much lately. Scorpius seemed to have retreated back to Albus, which she supposed wasn't very surprising; this was the first Weasley family Saturday he'd been to, and he was clearly still a little uncomfortable. The fact that he'd gravitated toward James earlier in the day as a familiar presence was progress in and of itself - they'd gotten along better in Hogwarts after Rose had started going out with Scorpius, but they'd certainly never been what she would call close. James was still clearly preferable compared to most of her other cousins.
By the time they finished dinner, she could tell by the way he was fidgeting that he'd clearly had enough. As Teddy and her grandmother took charge of the dishes and everyone else began to file back into the living room, she grabbed his hand and said in an undertone, "Do you want to get going?" The relief was clear on his face, and she kissed his cheek. "Just let me say goodbye."
"Goodbye" took about twenty minutes, and by the time they stepped out of the house, the sky had grown dark.
"It's pretty, isn't it?" she asked, looking up at the sky.
"Mm." He wrapped his arms around her and rested his head on hers. It still felt a little strange - he'd been about her height for most of their relationship, but toward the end of their seventh year he'd had an unexpected growth spurt that left him about sixteen centimetres taller than she was. "Do you want to go home or come back to my place?"
She felt a smile spread across her face. "You're not tired of the Weasley clan yet?"
"Not you." He kissed the top of her head. "So?"
Rose twisted around and stood on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. "I'd love to go back to your place."
In the dim light cast by the glow from the windows, she could see a sparkle in Scorpius's grey eyes. "Oh, good." He took her hand and turned on his heel, and when she opened her eyes, they were standing in front of the door to his flat.
He let go of her hand to pull out his wand. He tapped the lock and muttered something under his breath, and after a moment, they heard the deadbolt sliding back. He pushed the door open and she followed him in, pushing it closed behind her. The locks reengaged as they made their way into the living room, where he collapsed onto his couch.
She paused in the doorway to watch him. The light in the hallway had flickered on when they'd walked in, and he pointed his wand at another orb on the wall before tossing it onto the table. The orb began to glow, and he looked over at her. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." She smiled when he shifted uncomfortably. "What? I'm not allowed to admire my boyfriend?"
He snorted. "Admire me from over here." He patted the cushion next to him. "If you're over there, I can't touch you." She raised her eyebrows, and he made a face. "You know what I mean."
She made her way across the room and settled next to him. "Thanks for coming," she said as she snuggled up to him and put her head on his chest.
He wrapped an arm around her and began to run his fingers through her bright red curls. "It was fun. I mean, I felt a little awkward, but it was still fun." Rose closed her eyes and inhaled his scent. Just as she was beginning to doze off, he cleared his throat. "Hey, Rose?"
"Mm?"
He hesitated for moment. "Would you go to something like that with my grandmother?"
"Sure," she said sleepily. Her eyes were starting to drift shut, and she had no desire to move. "I like your grandmother."
He didn't respond for a minute, and her contentedness started to slip away. "Not my mum's mother," he said finally. "My dad's."
She jerked back to stare at him. He looked serious, which she supposed made some sense - it was hardly something to joke about. She inched back from him a little and drew her knees up to her chest. "Your grandfather was a Death Eater."
"That's why I'm not asking you to meet him. She wasn't, though."
Rose snorted. "Kind of semantics, don't you think?"
He sighed, but he didn't push back against it - probably because he knew she was right. His grandmother wasn't like his father; even if she'd never gotten her hands too dirty herself, she'd been complicit with what everyone around her had been doing. His grandfather had certainly done a lot of terrible things in the wars - Rose was fairly certain he'd murdered people, and she knew he'd used the Imperius Curse on his own son. The only reason Lucius Malfoy wasn't still in Azkaban was that Scorpius's grandmother had helped the Order in the Battle of Hogwarts.
She'd also gathered that neither of Scorpius's parents really spoke to him, and she trusted their judgment more than her boyfriend's when it came to his father's family.
"It is," Scorpius admitted. "But she's still my grandmother."
Rose snorted. "Right. And I'm sure she's so eager to meet me. I'm diluting her family's blood, remember?"
Scorpius let his head fall back back to rest on the couch. "Rose, I wouldn't -" She raised her eyebrows when he glanced over at her, and he sighed. "Look, if she said anything to you, we'd leave and I wouldn't speak to her again."
She didn't challenge him on that. She didn't doubt that what he was saying was true, but it also wasn't the point - and, in some ways, the idea that the meeting could destroy Scorpius's relationship with his grandmother made her want to meet the woman even less.
"I can't." His eyes met hers. "Scorpius, I can't. I'm not going to that - that place."
"Oh! No! No - no, I meant that we could meet her for lunch somewhere. I don't like going to the manor - I wouldn't take you there." The skepticism was clearly still apparent on her face, because he sighed. "I do get it, and it's fine if the answer is no. I just - I wanted to ask."
"Why do you care, anyway?"
He made a face. "Because she's been bothering me about it. I guess she used to bother Dad and he wouldn't consider it, but he told her to take it up with me now that I'm done with school."
Rose sighed and looked away from him. "I'll think about it."
He slung his legs off the couch and scooted over to put his arm around her shoulders. "Thank you." He kissed her forehead.
"I didn't say yes," she reminded him as he began to run his fingers through her hair.
"I know," he murmured. "And it's really, really okay if the answer is no."
"Is it important to you?"
He hesitated. "Kind of? I don't know. I like my grandmother, and it would be nice if - I don't know. She could get to know you, I guess. Rose, she's not like my grandfather."
"Do your parents talk to her?"
This somehow felt like it was suddenly very important. "Dad does. I don't think Mum would seek her out or anything, but she lets her come over for dinner."
It was a low bar, but it was more than Rose had been expecting. "I'll think about it."
"Okay." He swallowed hard. "I - thanks."
keep reading about rose and scorpius in the wrinkles of the road!