Chapter 16: Aftermath and Endings

Disclaimer: Let us go, then, you and I . . . Once again into the breach, dear friends.

See, if I didn't tell you that those words didn't belong to me, and were, in fact, pulled from T.S. Eliot and William Shakespeare, respectively, that would be plagiarism. Also if I didn't tell you that Harry Potter et al. don't belong to me, that would also be plagiarism.

This is a really short disclaimer (for me), but I really can't think of anything else that needs to be said. Characters, world = not mine. Plot, words = mine. Thanks for reading!

"So what you're saying," Al interrupted Uncle Harry, "Is that this guy was a complete nutter. We're talking off the charts."

"He broke out of a hospital psychiatric ward. 'Nutter' is not a kind way to put it, Al, but . . . essentially, yes."

"And that he never would have come even close to succeeding if we hadn't gone looking for him?"

Uncle Harry looked at Rose, who couldn't meet his glance, and nodded. "I'm sorry. I know you thought you were doing what was best, but – "

"But we messed up," Rose said hollowly. "And almost got ourselves killed."

"Well, I wouldn't say – " Al began.

"And now," Rose said, her voice rising somewhat hysterically, "We're never going to be allowed outside of Hogwarts again, and we'll never get to . . ." she trailed off, losing steam.

"Never get to what, Rose?" her mother asked gently. They sat in the Hospital Wing. It was past noon now, and Rose's ankle had been healed hours before, but her parents insisted she get some rest. Rose suspected it had more to do with the fact that they wanted a quiet place to talk. To tell us what idiots we are, she thought bitterly. She turned her head and looked out the window.

She couldn't believe how stupid she'd been. She'd been the one thinking she was so smart, to connect the dots and find the plot on the Resurrection Stone. She'd been the one who – completely accidentally – stole the Invisibility Cloak, knocking it into her bag when she'd rescued Al's Potions book during the police raid ("I thought it was a tablecloth!" she'd said defensively when Aunt Ginny found it. "A really, really nice tablecloth," she'd amended, seeing the look on Uncle Harry's face). She'd been the one who misinterpreted Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry's conversation, thought the wrong Hallow was missing, and insisted that they go on a suicide mission to get it back.

She couldn't believe how stupid she'd been.

She was lucky to still be alive. She was lucky Al and Scorpius were still alive. She was incredibly lucky they'd run into a desperate, literally insane man planning to resurrect his children from the grave using a ritual described in a fictional children's book, rather than anyone capable of formulating an actual plot. And now an innocent man was dead.

Well, presumed dead.

Well, kind of innocent. After all, even if his methods were questionable at best, he still had rather meticulously planned the capture and murder of two eleven-year olds. That he hadn't accomplished it was no fault of his own.

Still.

Rose wanted to bang her head against the wall. How could she have been so stupid?

"Rose," her father said, putting his large hand on her head, "We're not angry." Scorpius sniffed, the first noise he'd made since Rose's parents had arrived. Ron's head swiveled in his direction before he apparently remembered that he was pretending Scorpius wasn't there. "We're . . . upset," Ron conceded to the empty air, still studiously not looking at Scorpius. "You should have come to us before you went out by yourselves into a completely unknown situation."

"You should have known that we were doing everything we could to keep you safe," Aunt Ginny added, eyes flashing.

"It does explain a lot," Rose's mother said thoughtfully. Everyone looked at her. "Oh! I just meant that he was a Muggle. Explains why we couldn't trace any magic on the letters," she shrugged, "He wasn't using any."

"How did he get into the school, then?" Scorpius asked suddenly, and everyone's attention swiveled to him. "It's the obvious question."

Silence stretched.

"That's . . . a really good question, Scorpius," Uncle Harry said.

"We should be able to check the school's defenses," Rose's mother said thoughtfully. "In Hogwarts, A History it says that there are ways to track . . . " she trailed off. "Yes, I've resigned myself to the fact that no one else has read it."

"I want to know how he found out who we are. Where we live," Rose's father said harshly.

"He said something about . . . meetings?" Al said.

"Meetings?" Aunt Ginny asked.

"He said 'Stone' was a code name that they called him in the meetings," Al shrugged, "I think that was it. He wouldn't say anything more about it."

"But he was clearly acting alone," Uncle Harry mused.

"In this, yes, it appears so," Rose's mother said. "But do you really think one clinically insane man who was getting his knowledge of "magic" from a Muggle children's book managed alone what no other Muggle in history has done? Do you really think he figured us out, tracked us down, broke into and out of Howarts several times, and decided that Hogsmeade was a good place to set up shop – all by himself?"

"Yes?" Al aksed hopefully.

"No," his father sighed. "No, he definitely had help somewhere."

"This isn't over," Aunt Ginny said grimly.

Uncle Harry ruffled his hair. "We'll have to look into his connections – family, friends, the works. Shouldn't be too hard to get hold of the Muggle records, but it may take a bit longer to get access."

"If we have to do it legally," Rose's father muttered.

"Can we at least have a nap first?" Al asked. The adults laughed, sharing a glance that Rose liked not at all.

"Yes, Al," Aunt Ginny said. "Because it is over for you," she added firmly.

"But –" Al began. Rose remained silent; she'd known this was coming.

"But nothing, Al. You're grounded."

"Same goes for you, Rosie," her father added, much too cheerfully for Rose's taste.

Rose folded her arms and met her father's eyes defiantly. "I bet no one ever grounded you for trying to save the world," she said.

"No," said Uncle Harry. "And sometimes," he added sadly, "I wish they had."

Rose knew he could only be talking about Sirius, and suddenly felt ashamed. After all, it was only by an extraordinary amount of luck the she, Al, and Scorpius had avoided the same fate. Well, not the same fate – pushed through an enchanted archway into the Realm of Death by Bellatrix Lestrange would have been difficult, given that the archway was in London and Bellatrix was dead – but something horrible and gruesome, at the least.

"But we did well once we got in there!" Al exclaimed. "I mean, you should have seen Rose, with the Reducto's, and the Deluminator, and –"

"You did well once you got into the situation you never needed to be in," Rose's mother agreed, shaking her head. "Which is why we're not going to tell Headmistress Sprout about how you somehow managed to leave school grounds after hours, break into the Shrieking Shack, and subsequently destroy one of the oldest buildings in Hogsmeade. Does that seem fair?"

Al nodded silently. Rose pursed her lips, but nodded her head as well. Rose and Al's parents made to leave.

Scorpius cleared his throat lightly. "And if you'd be so kind," he began, and Uncle Harry raised an eyebrow.

"We won't tell your parents," he assured Scorpius. "Although you should probably just assume you're grounded as well." Even Rose's father chuckled, albeit uncomfortably, as they left the Hospital Wing.

"When would we even talk to his parents?" Rose heard her father's voice echo down the hallway.

The Hospital Wing was silent for a moment.

"This isn't over," Al said in that stubborn tone, the same one he adopted whenever Aunt Ginny tried to get him to finish his greens before going after Grandma Weasley's cookies.

"This isn't over," Scorpius agreed. They both looked at Rose expectantly, as though it were somehow her decision, her call. But hadn't she done enough?

Rose sighed and looked out the window. "It is for me."

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The next several weeks were a blur. There was a Quidditch game that Rose didn't really care much about – Gryffindor's team wasn't in the finals this year, and Fred, James, and Al took it rather poorly, she thought (pot calling the kettle black the nasty voice whispered in her head). Scorpius and Azalea seemed to be on speaking terms again, which Rose really only cared about insomuch as it meant Azalea stopped making strange sniffing noises and turning up her nose whenever Rose and Al were around. James asked Kimberly Ashfield out – again – and got turned down spectacularly – again. Rose thought Fred needn't have looked so smug about it, but she didn't care enough to say anything.

There was homework, but without the distraction of researching the Resurrection Stone during every available moment, it was almost comical how easy it was to keep up with her classes. The fact that exams were approaching barely gave her a pause; she'd sat down and drawn up a study schedule for herself months before, and one for Al just in case he decided to actually listen to her. Then she'd made one for Scorpius and put it straight into the Common Room fire; she didn't imagine he'd appreciate it.

By the middle of May, Rose had stopped feeling sorry for herself, though her stomach still felt hollow whenever she thought of Marduin's body beneath the rubble of the Shrieking Shack. So that part, she didn't let herself think about. For that matter, she didn't let herself dwell much on any of it. She was still definitively determined that her role in whatever all this had been was finished; her parents could handle it, she thought with certainty (and, truth be told, some bitterness). She, Al, and Scorpius were safe: her ankle and Scorpius's cuts had long since healed, and none of the Professors really knew what had happened, so there had been no trouble to speak of. There were some benefits to being a child of the Weasleys and the Potters.

Rose thought her older cousins might know some of what had happened. At least some of them. Victoire seemed to watch her just a bit more than usual; Rose could feel her eyes from the Ravenclaw table. And while certainly Fred, Louis and James couldn't have known – they would have been crowing it from the Astronomy Tower, that time their little cousins snuck off school grounds without so much as getting a detention for it – Rose did get a rather nice letter from Teddy about his mishap first year, which had resulted in a school-wide panic and, very nearly, the involvement of the Ministry of Magic in Hogwarts affairs for the first time since one Dolores Umbridge. She thought he must have started out trying to write about how poor his decision-making skills were as an eleven-year-old, but it wound up reading more like a really belated brag.

And of course, Rose and Al had been held after Herbology by Uncle Neville, who had simply looked at them from behind a row of Sparring Sugarpeas.

"I'm not an Auror," he said finally, "But I did kill a pretty big snake with a sword once, and I like to think I'm pretty good with a wand. Next time, please come to me before you do anything stupid."

"Er . . ." said Al.

"Now go back to the Tower and study. Your parents tell me you're still grounded."

They went back to the Gryffindor Common Room. Rose didn't really know what "grounded" meant in the context of Hogwarts, but she'd been playing it safe by spending all of her time in Gryffindor Tower or the Library, when she wasn't in classes or in the Great Hall. Merlin knew it weren't as though there were any parties she had to avoid: all the first years were far too worried about exams at this point to be doing anything besides repeatedly putting quill to parchment.

By the end of May, when madness over exams was in full swing (no one had seen Katie in nearly a week, Melisenda was rumored to have been sleeping in her older sister's room to try to absorb some of the ambient third-year-level knowledge, and even Willow's face looked rather longer than usual, which was impressive), Rose thought she was fully over the experience – or, at least, the parts she'd let herself think about. She'd heard somewhere that eleven-year-olds were emotionally resilient, and decided she'd spent long enough pouting. Everyone made embarrassing mistakes when they were eleven, she decided. In just a few months she'd turn twelve, and then she could laugh about all the foolish things she'd done when she was younger.

Also exams were in five days and that definitely took priority.

Of course, that was before she'd come across Al and Scorpius in a corner of the Common Room. She'd thought they were studying – even Connor McLaggen had finally admitted to not knowing everything – but she caught a glimpse of the parchment they were poring over.

The Marduin Incident, it was titled.

"What are you doing?" she whispered harshly, sitting down beside Al.

"Oh!" said Al, moving another piece of parchment titled The Perks of Peppermint: When Green is Good over the incriminating sheet, "We're studying. Potions. Y'see. Peppermint!"

"Peppermint is good," Scorpius agreed gravely. "It has . . . perks," he finished lamely.

"Mhmm," Rose replied, "And the sheet below that?"

Guilt flashed across Al's face. "It's about . . . er. Mustard!"

"Mustard doesn't show up on the Potions curriculum until third year," Rose pointed out.

Scorpius elbowed Al. "He means marigold. Everyone knows mustard is in third year."

"Everyone who's memorized the Hogwarts curriculum," Al muttered.

Rose reached over and grabbed the top sheet off the stack. She glanced down the sheet Al had tried to hide. The Marduin Incident. She'd been right. Facts was the title of the first section. Suppositions was next. And finally, Unknown. The space under each heading was filled with Al's sprawling scribble and Scorpius's spiked, tiny script.

"Tell me you two have actually started studying for exams and haven't just been working on this . . . ridiculous . . ." Rose gestured wordlessly at the parchment, " . . . this."

"Obviously," Scorpius sniffed, affronted. "I finished studying days ago."

"Finished studying? How can you finish studying?" Scorpius opened his mouth, no doubt to say something snarky, and Rose cut him off. "No, never mind. What is this?"

"Listen, Rosie," Al began, but Rose rounded on him in a furious whisper.

"Did you even look at the study schedule I gave you?"

"Er, well, that is to say, look at? I mean, yes. I looked at it."

"And?"

"And then we used the back side to make a sketch of the Shrieking Shack. You wouldn't believe the eye Scorpius has for detail, Rosie, especially with it being so dark and all while we were – "

"Eurgh!" Rose said, throwing up her hands and pacing around the table. Scorpius watched her warily and tried to hide his involuntary flinch when she sat back down in a huff. From his expression, she might have been advancing on him with a pair of scissors and malicious intent directed at his meticulously combed hair. "You boys are being ridiculous. It's over."

"It's not," said Al fiercely.

"You're being so stupid."

"Oh, well, that's mature."

"I'm eleven!"

"And you're the smartest person I know! We need your help on this, Rosie. Mum and Dad do too." Al pushed the offending stack of parchment towards her with the tips of his fingers. Scorpius looked on as though he were watching a particularly interesting play at a Quidditch match.

Rose hesitated. She wouldn't be dragged back into this. Her parents had it covered. She had exams to take, and weren't those so much more important in her eleven-year-old life? Plus, she'd nearly gotten them all killed trying to be smart.

She was smart, of course – that wasn't the issue. She was smart the way her mother had been smart. But that she told herself, wasn't important here. That was books and cleverness, which she had in spades. And yet, even with books and cleverness on her side, she'd nearly gotten them all killed trying to tackle problems above her age grade, as it were. She knew she should leave those to her parents, to Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny. They'd never lead her as wrong as she'd led herself. And Albus, and Scorpius, she thought with a rush of guilt.

Al was watching her face intently. "Just take a look, Rosie. What harm is looking at some parchment going to do?"

Rose sighed and flipped straight to the Unknown section, which featured prominently a rather haphazard list of questions.

1. What meetings was Stone/Marduin going to?

2. Who else was at the meetings?

3. How did he get into Hogwarts?

4. How did he get into Hogsmeade?

5. Are the politemen involved?

6. What did we find in the Forbidden Forest?

Rose rolled her eyes; the numbering must have been Scorpius's choice – Al wouldn't have been nearly that logical. Around the central list there were a series of scrawled notes, most of which Rose wouldn't have been able to read without either a guide to Runes translation or a microscope.

She rolled her eyes, but she was still thinking. Al and Scorpius were, to some degree, right. Or at least not wrong. There were things left unresolved after their encounter with Marduin – and it wasn't that she didn't think hers and Al's parents had a handle on the whole thing; it was that they didn't know everything. Which, she realized, was mostly her fault, since they couldn't know what she hadn't told them. Still. They hadn't been there in the Forest. They hadn't been there in the Shrieking Shack. There were things that the three of them – Rose, Al, and Scorpius – knew that their parents didn't. Things that could impact their safety, and their families' safety. And that meant that it wasn't over for her, even if she wanted it to be.

"It's 'policemen,'" she muttered.

"That's it?" Al asked.

"What do you want from me, Al, it's a list of questions."

"Good questions," said Al.

"Well – "

"Questions we don't know the answers to."

"Yes, and – "

"Yes, and these are important questions. More important than stupid final exams or – "

"You're right."

"And definitely more important than whatever Wistorren was spouting off the other . . . what?"

"I think you're right, Al."

"Erm."

There was a brief moment of silence during which Al and Scorpius stared at each other and there was much waggling of eyebrows and pointed head nods.

"So," Al began, "You're back?"

"'Back' in the sense that I'm agreeing that any potential threat to our actual lives is probably more important than our first year exams, yes."

Al let out a whoop, and most of the Common Room turned to glare at him. For other students, after all, exams were the only important thing on their minds. Rose studiously looked down at the parchment in front of her and gave heads time to turn away again before responding.

"But," she continued, "I've no idea what you think you're going to get done with this information or these questions. I've every confidence that our parents have already come up with these same questions (although potentially with better spelling), and they've got much better resources and much more experience with this kind of thing. And since we've got exams in five days, I think our time is better spent – "

" . . . In the library," Al said, sighing. He collected the scattered sheets of parchment. "I guess I could start studying," he said, grinning at Rose.

"Start?!"

Rose was so distracted in berating her cousin that she failed to notice the speculative look on Scorpius's face.

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Exams were . . . well, exams were, and they were over, and that was that. Rose, predictably, had a near-panic attack outside of Charms and then, predictably, proceeded to ace the practical. And all of her other exams as well, for that matter. Victoire and Molly were maybe a little too proud of their little cousin; Rose didn't think the first-year Ravenclaws appreciated their frequent and vocal reminders that a Gryffindor had bested them in every exam. The last time Molly had started cooing over her in one of the corridors, Agrippina Albertson looked as though smoke might start coming out of her ears. She thought about pointing out that there was another first-year Gryffindor who had also beaten out first year Ravenclaws in nearly every exam (except, for some reason, Potions), but thought the better of it. Scorpius probably wouldn't have wanted the attention anyway.

In fact, all of the first-year Gryffindors had done fairly well on their exams. Rose couldn't take credit for Dax's Exceeds Expectations in Defense and Charms, but she did allow herself a small glow of pride for helping Al pass his classes in the end. It wasn't, she thought, that he wasn't smart. It was more that he stubbornly failed to see any correlation between studying and exam performance.

Al had brightened up considerably once exams were over, and gave Rose no end of ribbing for seeming sadder after exams had passed than while they were happening. For Rose, the few days after exams had been mostly a blur of packing and last-visits – to Hagrid, to Uncle Neville, to the Giant Squid (whom she wasn't really going to miss, but it was something of a Weasley-Potter tradition to go down to the lake and throw sweets in the direction of the Giant Squid as an end-of-year farewell. Rose had no idea how that had started, but some things were better left unasked). The end of her first year felt like the end of an era to Rose, and she was trying to hold on to that feeling rather than dwelling on Marduin, and his meetings, and all the questions left unanswered. She spent what felt like an enormous amount of time wandering around the grounds with Willow, Katie, and Annabelle (who was, if possible, even more exuberant than usual), introducing them to Hagrid and Muffin and the rock cakes, or back in their dormitory packing and doing their utmost to avoid Melisenda (who, in the glow of early summer, seemed to be something of a black hole). In short, doing everything she could to make this ending feel as though it meant something, as though it would imprint itself on her neurons and she'd be able to look back years later and say, "Oh, the end of my first year at Hogwarts. I remember those days."

To be sure, she was probably the only one thinking about it that way.

Still, it was in the overall good spirits of those who have completed their exams and (with the exception of Connor, according to Al) packing and will proceed to entirely empty their heads of all knowledge they'd accumulated that year over the summer holidays, only to recall at the beginning of the fall term that their courses were, in point of fact, cumulative, and they might actually need some of that information they'd so studiously forgotten – it was in those good spirits that the Gryffindor first-years made their way down to the Great Hall for the end-of-term Feast. They hadn't won the House Cup this year –Slytherin's big win on the Quidditch pitch meant they were just too far ahead of everyone else for there to be much of a contest. And, Rose thought to herself, it wasn't as though there were a lot of points for Headmistress Sprout to award last-minute. In fact, she was lucky her parents had kept the whole Shrieking Shack incident under wraps, or Headmistress Sprout may have actually ended up deducting last-minute points.

The Great Hall was decked in silver and green, and nearly everyone seemed to already be there by the time Rose and Al sat down. Everyone except James, who was probably off somewhere planning to cause trouble. And, for some reason, Scorpius was missing – Rose realized she hadn't seen him in several hours.

Just as she was starting to suspect that Scorpius wasn't simply tardy, he was Tardy with a capital "T" and that spelled Trouble, Something walked in. It was humanoid in shape, and student-sized, and made entirely of what seemed to be roses, so it was completely impossible to tell if it was actually a student-shaped plant or a plant-covered student. The Creature walked to the Gryffindor table haltingly, and sat as far from Kimberly Ashfield as possible. Which happened to put it right next to Rose.

"Ouch ouch ouch," it said. Dax Destrier stared, mouth agape, from across the table.

"I'm sorry?"

"I didn't really think the issue of thorns through."

"Aha," said Rose faintly.

"James! My dearest brother!" said Al.

"James?!" said Rose.

"James?!" echoed Dax.

"I don't want to talk about it," the be-flowered figure muttered.

Fred strolled in and made his way to the other end of the table where, out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw him sit down next to Kimberly. The bunch of roses that were James's head swiveled in their direction as she kissed him in greeting and he put an arm around her waist.

The James bush groaned.

"Oh, brighten up, Jamesie. Everyone saw that one coming," Al said, slathering a dinner roll with butter.

James regarded him silently. If looks could kill, Rose thought, the flowers covering his eyes would have shriveled into dust by now. She giggled.

"Well, at least, I saw it coming. They were horrible to be around every Quidditch practice."

James, apparently trying to ignore his little brother, reached for a roll.

"How, exactly, are you going to eat that?" Al asked.

"That's IT!" James shouted, slamming his hand down on the table. "OUCH!" He stood up and stalked off.

"I bet Professor Longbottom would be able to help you with your . . . er . . . little problem!" Al yelled after him.

"What in Merlin's name was that?" Rose said.

"He and Louis were trying some crazy enchantment earlier," Al explained as he set about attacking a piece of steak and kidney pie larger than his head. "Something to do with flowers and Ashfield. Except then Fred and Ashfield walked into the Common Room holding hands, and James lost his concentration, and . . . well. It didn't go right."

"So," Dax said, squinting after James, "That stuff that Flitwick said at the beginning of the year, about saying the words right and not mixing up the letters and that buffalo thing – "

"Yes, that can really happen," Al said.

Dax looked at his arms and shook out his hands before resting them on the table and staring at them skeptically. "Wicked . . ." he breathed.

Melisenda snickered. "Even after a year at Hogwarts, you still have to explain everything to the Muggleborns more than once."

Rose rolled her eyes. "You know, Wilkes, no one asked for your commentary."

"And no one asked you to be a snobby know-it-all, Weasley, but I suppose you didn't have much of a choice, given your parents."

"What's that about my Aunt and Uncle?" Al said fiercely.

Rose sighed. "Listen, it's the end of term Feast. Can we just . . . postpone this? Until next year?"

"Postpone what?"

"You sniping at me, me sniping back – I just haven't got the energy."

"Tired, Weasley?"

"As a matter of fact – "

"From late nights wandering?" In response to Rose's silence, Melisenda continued. "Perhaps, wandering further than you should have?"

Rose looked at Melisenda. Melisenda glared back.

"How's your ankle, Weasley?"

Rose felt as though the room had started to spin slowly. Next to her, Al's face had gone grey. His mouth slowly opened.

"Did you hurt your ankle, Rose?" Annabelle asked, standing up to reach for some salad.

"My ankle is fine," Rose said slowly.

"What ankle?" Al asked. Katie giggled into her soup spoon. "Er, I mean, obviously she has ankles, I just . . . "

"My ankle. Is. Fine." Rose said firmly. Her eyes were still on Melisenda's, but she dropped the staring contest and turned definitively to Connor. "So, what are everyone's plans for summer hols?"

The conversation got markedly less tense after that, though Rose still felt the buzz of adrenaline in her fingers and her chest. How did Melisenda know? Had she been following them that night? Had she seen them coming back through the portrait, bedraggled and broken? Had she been lurking outside the Hospital wing? And more importantly, what was she planning to do with that knowledge?

The fact that Scorpius still hadn't turned up to the Feast was also concerning, but Melisenda's revelation that she knew at least some of what had happened a few weeks prior took precedence. After that, Rose was too distracted to really enjoy the Feast. She and Al excused themselves early to go talk in the Tower before everyone else got back. They were halfway back to Gryffindor tower when Rose realized that Scorpius hadn't turned up for the Feast at all. They found him in the Common Room, hunched over a sheaf of parchment paper, flames flickering over his still face, still wearing his robes as though he were going to class, not leaving for home the next day.

"Scorpius, you missed the Feast," Al said. "Good Feast." He dropped into one of the chairs near the fire.

"Good, you're back," Scorpius said, standing and stretching. "Let's go to the Library."

"Scorpius," Al said, sagging further into the chair, "You may not have realized this, but exams are over."

"Potter," Scorpius said, "You may not have realized this, but the Library is a place that exists regardless of whether or not you have exams coming up."

In the library, they found a quiet corner – which wasn't hard, given that most everyone else was either still at the Feast or packing. Scorpius dropped a sheaf of parchment paper onto the table in front of them.

"There's more," was all he said.

"There always is," Rose sighed, picked up the top sheet of parchment paper, and immediately forgot that she'd intended to tell Scorpius about what Melisenda had said.

"More," as it transpired, was a pile of information from Scorpius's father in the form of records and hastily scrawled margin notes. There were copies of death certificates – three, one each for Marduin's wife and two children. Twins, as it turned out, and they had been eleven when they'd been killed by Death Eaters. Rose quickly turned through the pages containing crime scene reports, because there were still some things she'd really rather not know, and it felt a bit like walking on Marduin's own freshly dug grave. He hadn't been right in the head, and he had been planning to kill all of them, but Rose couldn't even imagine what her parents would do if she or Hugo were killed. She felt a pang of sympathy.

The stack of papers appeared to be in chronological order, as the next sheets were newspaper clippings dated only a few months after the death certificates. There were two, worn, yellowed, clearly from the back pages of the paper, where they'd been buried in the hopes that no one would read that far. "MP's Brother Voluntarily Checks in to Psychiatric Ward," read one, but another (in even smaller type from an even higher page number) claimed that "Brother of MP Publicly Sedated, Dragged to Asylum in Chains." That seemed rather less likely to have escaped the public notice, and plus, didn't they stop calling them "asylums" ages ago? Rose snorted. She could have reached the conclusion that Marduin was mentally unbalanced without the newspaper confirming it, but it was nice to see that she wasn't the only one who'd noticed.

Far more interesting than the clippings, though, was the next item in the stack, which could not have possibly been obtained through legal means. It appeared to be Marduin's entire patient file – his admission papers, reports from various doctors on various biological processes, reports from his therapists, and –

"Most of it is just saying he's had trauma-induced delusions and hallucinations, poor bloke," Scorpius interrupted. "The only interesting bit is the last page."

Rose rolled her eyes – that "poor bloke" had, after all, tried to kill them. But she flipped past years' worth of medical charts and pulled out the final page in the file. It was only a few lines long, but she had to read it a few times to fully grasp its meaning.

"Memo: Patient Missing. On this morning, 15th March 2010, the patient Peter J. Marduin was found to be missing from his room during morning rounds. No evidence of forced entry or exit from his room was noted, and an alarm triggering mechanism failed, as his RFID anklet was found on his pillow. It is unknown how the patient obtained the tools necessary to shear the anklet neatly in two, and his methods of escaping and evading detection have yet to be identified. Patient is generally non-violent, but should be approached with caution if found."

Rose glanced between the newspaper clippings and the hospital memo several times. Twelve years. Peter Marduin had been in the psychiatric ward for twelve years, with not even a peep or a prior escape attempt – so what had happened on March 15th, 2010? Why then? What had changed?

As the full implications of those few sentences hit her, Rose realized that was the wrong question. The right question was –

"So who was helping him?" Al asked softly.

"Al – "

"It had to have been wizards, Rose. There's just no other way – disappeared from a locked room with no trace, that anklet thing probably Diffindo'd in half on the way out – it's the only explanation."

"Well, not literally the only explanation," Scorpius added unhelpfully. Rose glared at him. "But it is the most likely," he conceded. "That Occam. Smart man, no?"

"Scorpius," Rose said. "Shut up."

"But – "

"Wait. First, tell me where on Merlin's green Earth you got this information, and then shut up."

"I told my father it was for a Muggle Studies project," Scorpius said.

"But you're not even in Muggle Studies! We're first years! Muggle Studies is a third year class! And classes are over! And – " she continued past Scorpius's non-verbal protest, "Your father definitely got hold of these files illegally, there is no way he just found them lying around. And on top of that, why would your father even believe you needed all of this," she waved the stack of papers wildly, "for a Muggle Studies project? You realize that's completely implausible. Tell me what actually happened."

Scorpius stared blankly back at her.

"Scorpius?"

He looked pointedly anywhere but at her, scanning the shelves of books and the empty chairs around them.

"Scorpius?"

Scorpius met Al's eyes, and they both giggled.

"You did tell him to shut up, Rose," Al said, completely unapologetically. Scorpius smirked.

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Obviously, they needed to get this information to their parents, although Rose was sure they hardly needed confirmation that Marduin had had inside help, as it were, from the Wizarding World. Still, this was at the very least a starting point – a breakout from a psychiatric ward, Rose was sure, would have left some sort of trace or clue behind. Whether or not they'd be able to find it seven years later was another matter. Rose shook her head. Wasn't that the sort of thing that Uncle Harry dealt with all the time?

Fortunately, they would be seeing their parents the next day.

Boarding the Hogwarts express with their trunks proved to be just as chaotic on the return journey as it had been at the beginning of the year. Students were continually running up and down the corridors, looking for friends, sharing goodbyes and addresses and summer plans. Rose, Al, and Scorpius dodged their way to one of the last cars, past Zeke (who tried to follow them for a while), Fred and a mostly de-thorned James (who were fighting furiously), and the lovely woman with the food cart (obviously they stopped to buy Pumpkin Pasties). In the warmth of the sunlight filtering through the window, full of Pumpkin Pasties and lulled by the gentle rocking of the train, it wasn't long before Rose and Al fell asleep in opposite corners of their little compartment.

"Oh, Merlin," Al whispered, sitting up suddenly and getting a facefull of curtain for his effort.

"Go back to sleep, Al," Rose said drowsily. "You're dreaming about James and the giant melon again."

"No, not even. Oh Merlin, Rose, how did we not see it before?"

"See what?" asked Scorpius, looking up from the copy of Hogwarts, A History that Rose had lent him.

"Marduin was a Muggle . . ."

"Yes, we'd worked that one out," Scorpius drawled. "What of it?"

"Well, we've been trying to figure out how he got into Hogsmeade, and into the school. But he didn't just get into the school, he got into Gryffindor Tower. Without damaging the Fat Lady. He must have gone through the portrait – there's no other way to get in." Rose and Scorpius were silent, processing. "Well, you're the ones who've read Hogwarts, A History. Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're right," said Rose and Scorpius simultaneously.

"So how did Marduin get into Gryffindor Tower all those times? How did he leave a rabbit in the dormitory? How did he steal the Deluminator?"

"He can't have done –" Rose began.

"Without the password." Scorpius finished. "Which means he didn't just have a wizard helping him. He had a Gryffindor student –"

"Melisenda," said Rose immediately. "She knew we'd snuck out, she said as much at the Feast. They must have been in communication somehow – "

"Or," Scorpius continued, "It was a professor." The trio looked at each other in mute horror before Al voiced what all three were thinking.

"Callister."

The next year was going to be interesting indeed.

The End

Author's Note: Holy crap, everyone. There have been more reviews of this story in the past month than I've gotten for any single chapter before. And I suppose it says something that now I'm starting to get critical comments – which I very much appreciate! If you notice something specific, please let me know. Things that I will be sure to fix: internal inconsistencies (especially as I've been away for two years, and like, kind of can't remember what I wrote?), non-canon compliance (except for The Cursed Child, which was basically just someone else's glorified FanFic as far as I can tell), thorough failure to be British (because I'm not, although if British-ness were determined by quantity of tea consumed, I would be).

So . . . thus ends this installment. When I started this fic however many years ago, I had the inkling that there would be more to the story, and that has proven to be the case – the kiddies have made it through a year of Hogwarts, and I've written over 100,000 words, and this seems to be a nice stopping point - and so while I think I have to wrap this one up, I'm also considering moving on and continuing with Year Two in the saga of Rose, Al, and Scorpius. I'm making no guarantees as to the timeframe of that; I have to go through the work of drawing up a general outline, which I remember taking a considerable amount of time to figure out last time. I should probably also reread this fic, because I honestly can't remember all the little things I had set up in here that I wanted to finish in potential future installments. I also have, you know, other things happening in my life and, unfortunately, cannot afford (time-wise or money-wise) to spend all of my time writing FanFic. If you're interested in reading more in this little next gen world I'm creating, here are some things you can do:

1. Check out my (one-shot) story about Teddy and Victoire ( s/10973161/1/Right-Wrong-and-the-Element-of-Risk)

2. Let me know if you're interested in reading other one-shots, and if so, what characters you'd like to see. Sometimes one-shots can be a little easier for me to manage, and I have lots of thoughts about all the Potter-Weasley kiddies!

3. Leave a review and let me know what you thought of this story. Seriously – reviews are what brought me back into this world, and they are a huge part of what makes me feel accountable to people, which is a huge part of what makes me put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards, as it were).

Most importantly, thank you so much for sticking with this story, all the way to the end, sometimes through long periods (two years?!) of waiting for updates. Thank you for reading.

Edit: Because it appears I'll be getting this question a lot (understandably so) - that whole bit with the voice and the fire in the Forbidden Forest was not fully wrapped up on purpose. I know in the context of this story as a completed whole, that looks like a plot hole. It is not. Promise.