disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine, in any way, whatsoever. That, is depressing.

A/n. So. I'm really sorry. This is incredibly late, and it's been what? A year? In my defence, I've been lacking in inspiration and in time. But still. I feel really bad for not updating this sooner.

Nonetheless, here is the Rose Weasley chapter. There's Rose/Scorpius in this, and I apologize for those who aren't fans of that pairing, but I'm greatly addicted to it, so here it is. This will be the only chapter with it though. I think the next one will be Ron, eventually, but you never know.

But hey! This chapter is alot longer than normal ones. That might be because of my love for not only DracoHermione, but also RoseScorpius, but ah well.

Again, my major apologies. please enjoy, and reviews are always appreciated and loved.

Rose Weasley;

As far as I'm concerned, and as I'm sure any rational person would agree (not that rational people are easy to come by these days), a twenty-three year old girl, living with her fiancé, should be allowed to see said fiancé for more than ten minutes two days before her wedding. However, my family clearly did not agree on that point, seeing as my life, two days before my wedding, was filled with last minute fixing of my dress, securing photographers, ensuring that my family's speeches wouldn't be hideously embarrassing (and knowing Hugo, that was a legitimate concern), and other final details for the over-the-top wedding that came with marrying a Malfoy.

Yes. I, Rose Weasley, once a proud Gryffindor and Head Girl, in complete sanity and by my own choice, was marrying Scorpius Malfoy.

And because it was such a big deal, the wedding itself had to be a huge affair, with hundreds of relatives and friends and business associates. It wasn't my style at all, I was a low-key person, and so was Scorpius. But, as it happens, the Malfoy family is not. At all.

And neither was the Malfoy Manor – the venue, and currently, the place the entire wedding party was staying. The wedding party that pushed silverware and bridesmaid dresses in my face every three seconds.

I'm an organized and hard-working person, really. I'm my mother's daughter. I'm also independent. And by the time that it was two days to my wedding, I was thoroughly fed up with playing the bride and not having the chance to see my groom, whatsoever.

By the time I went to bed that night, I was close to tears. Crying was a bad habit – sadness, anger, stress; it seemed that everything caused it. And that night was no exception as I childishly glared at the single bed I would be sleeping in again, without my fiancé.

I'd just resigned myself to falling asleep when I felt a weight at the bottom of my bed. Instantly, my eyes were open. I'd heard all about the war from my parents, I knew I had to be on guard. Where the hell was my wand? I began to fumble for it in the dark when a hand clamped over my mouth – clearly the intruder expected me to scream. In hindsight, that would have been a better choice than trying to find my wand.

"Rose, calm down, it's just me," a warm, familiar voice whispered in the darkness, accompanied by a low chuckle. "Lumos," Scorpius whispered, and his handsome face was suddenly visible right in front of me.

"Scorp!" I yelped, throwing my arms around him. "I feel like it's been bloody forever since I've seen you," I pouted, kissing him lightly. "I miss you."

He grinned. "I miss you too," he whispered, pushing back a loose tendril of my hair. "And that's why I thought we could have a midnight snack."

My answering grin was as bright as his wand. "Deal. Lead the way," I told him through a smile, grabbing his hand.

The Malfoy kitchen was rather eerie at night – dark and shadowy, the only light coming from the opened French patio doors, casting the room in an ethereal, silver, moonlit glow.

"So," Scorpius said, a charming smile filling his face as he kissed his way down the line of my jaw. "What would you like to eat?"

I bit back the tongue-in-cheek answer I wanted to give him – "You." – and was about to reply before I heard faint voices. Confused, I turned toward Scorpius, who was now looking suspiciously towards the patio that the opened French doors led onto, clearly having heard the murmurs too. Exchanging glances, we silently made our way to the doors, crouching down to view the strange scene unfolding outside. My mother was leaning back on a lounge chair, sipping a glass of red wine, her back to us. The bottle was on a small glass table beside her chair, and it was half empty. And filling the lounge chair beside her, also facing away from us, was none other than Scorpius' father. My jaw had dropped. I gaped at our parents, sitting civilly together – our parents, who supposedly couldn't stand each other. I leaned closer to catch my mother's soft voice in the sweet August air.

"Care for some wine?" she asked gently. "I brought it from our place. I figured I'd be needing it, but you're welcome to have some." She swirled the alcohol in a way that could be described as elegant if one overlooked her shaking hand.

"I'm more of a whiskey person," he replied with a flash of an unexpected smile. "As I'm sure you're already aware."

Although I didn't understand the reference or why my mother flinched at his statement, I still caught her following words, mostly because it involved me. "I don't happen to have whiskey on hand, but I recommend the wine, if you don't want to go find your own drink. Our children are getting married two days from now, Malfoy. I think that calls for some alcohol."

I felt as if I had been punched. I didn't know whether my mother's words were meant as a veiled insult or not, but they felt that way. I didn't want to watch this conversation anymore, but it was like a car crash. It seems that when something hurts to watch, it's exactly what you can't tear your gaze away from. I was frozen in place.

Scorpius' father's smile was surprisingly genuine, and his laughter light. "On that count, you're right, Granger."

I heard my mother's sharp inhale. "That's not my name anymore."

There was something wistful but hard in his eyes. "I know. But calling you anything else sounds wrong to me." He shook his head while filling his glass with wine. "I loved calling you Granger."

My mother looked younger than I had ever seen her, but she hesitated before speaking. Her tone was on edge. "Why?"

"Because it was mine," he said, taking a drink. He noted her look of confusion, the moonlight bleaching the colour from her eyes. "No one else ever called you that," he explained. "To your friends and housemates, you were Hermione." My mother's first name was strangely gentle on his tongue, but it still sounded foreign to my ears. "To your professors, you were Miss Granger. To the entirety of the wizarding world after the war, you were Hermione Granger, and then Hermione Weasley." His voice was bitter on the word 'Weasley' but he swallowed it fast, forcing himself back into a lighter tone. "I was the only one who ever called you Granger. It was mine. Ours."

She looked down, the line of her mouth twisting down, something hard breaking in her eyes. It reminded me of the look upon her face if I disappointed her. "Draco…" she whispered quietly.

"What?" he said harshly. "You want me to not mention it, pretend it never happened? Pretend it's not horribly awkward for this to be happening? Sit here and say that we're so happy for our children when we're not?"

My eyes flickered in surprise to Scorpius, pressed beside me. His jaw was clenched, but his eyes were bewildered. His hand slowly gripped mine.

I turned back to the patio to see that Draco had set down his wine and was sitting up, very close to my mother. "You can't do that either," he whispered. "You can't do that. Do you want to know something?"

My mother nodded mutely as his hand grabbed her arm, his fingers tracing patterns upon her skin. "When he first told me he was dating Rose Weasley, of all people, I couldn't speak. All I could wonder was if she was just like you. If she was ridiculously smart, and somehow so beautiful underneath her cold mask. If her favourite colour was green even though she was a Gryffindor. If when she smiled, she got that one dimple that could knock him breathless." He ghosted a finger across her lips and onto her cheek, vulnerability laced in his expression. She closed her eyes at the sensation, biting her lip. "If when she kissed him," he continued, voice rough, "he forgot what he was about to say. If he would kill for her, die for her, do anything for her. I wondered if he loved her for all the same reasons I loved you. And I knew, somehow, that he'd done the smartest and bravest and best thing in his life when he proposed, because he did what I couldn't do." He reached up, and slowly pushed a messy tendril of my mother's hair behind her ear. His jaw was tight, but his eyes were honest, and I realized that he meant every word, even though he clearly hadn't meant to say everything that he had.

The tears were gathering in her eyes as she opened them. "Do you know what I hate?" she asked unsteadily, not waiting for an answer. "They look like us. And they sound like us. And I feel like every time I see them, it's a slap in the face for everything I gave up on. And I feel horrible. Because they're so right for each other. And I hate them for it. Because they're so young and so in love, and they deserve this, and it wasn't our fault. There was a war. It was harder times…" She was fullblown crying as her head fell to his shoulder.

"We were stronger than that," he whispered, holding her hand. "We should have stayed together, to hell with what anyone thought."

"No." I barely caught her quiet whisper, as she shook her head, the weight of it still supported by his shoulder. "We weren't that strong. We'd like to pretend we were, but we'd just hardly survived a war, and you were going through prison trials, and Ron kept asking me for dinner, and no one could ever even know. We weren't strong at all. And though we sit here and hate ourselves for it, we didn't take the easy way out, we took the only way out."

She lifted her head to show her tearstained face. He wiped her tears furiously. "In two days," he whispered, "we're going to our own wedding."

She shook her head. "Don't do this anymore, please." Her voice broke on the last word. "I'm married and so are you, and regrets are nothing at all. All our lives, we've just been pawns for the war, and you know it. We just followed the paths we were meant to, played out the futures we were supposed to have. We were never supposed to break the mould. It's Rose's and Scorpius' story, not ours, and we can't be so petulant to sit here and feel sorry for ourselves. We made this choice years ago. It's way too late to sit here and hate how our children are doing exactly what we couldn't."

She stood up, gathering the wine and glasses, slowly wiping the last of her tears away. "Maybe we should go back to bed now," she said, voice blank and emotionless. "The rehearsal's tomorrow."

"I miss you," Draco said, voice quiet and broken. "All the time."

I watched my mother pause, her back to him, and close her eyes. "Sometimes," she whispered, voice heavy and filled with such hopelessness that I felt tears fill my eyes. "I miss you too."

As she approached the French doors, I pulled Scorpius' hand and dragged him toward the stairwell, not prepared to face my mother after what I had just seen, and heard, and felt. He followed me blindly to my room, escaping the kitchen before my mother caught sight of us through her tears.

I fell upon the bed, but Scorpius remained standing, seemingly dumbstruck.

"My father," he whispered. "My father."

"And my mother," I replied quietly. "I can't understand it either."

"No," Scorpius, whispered, sitting down on the bed now, playing with a strand of my hair. "It's not that."

I blinked, confused. "Then what else could it possibly be? I think the shock would be that our parents are – were – in love with each other."

He shook his head, picking up my hand and drawing circles in my palm. "That didn't surprise me that much. I was more shocked that my father, who I've idolized my whole life, was too much of a bloody coward to stay with the girl he wanted to be with."

I looked up at him, surprised into silence. His eyes were hard, his expression like stone, and his voice like ice. "Scorpius?" I whispered, bringing a hand to my face. He glanced at me, eyes softening only a fraction. "They made that decision together," I whispered. "Maybe it was too hard. Or maybe they were both cowards."

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he whispered. "I'll never leave you." He brought his lips to my forehead, and whispered the final words of that night, words he would repeat two days from that moment in our personally written vows. "I'll never be scared to love you like you deserve."