carpe diem

She's always been impulsive.

Hugo always complained about it when they were kids. He hated how one moment they could be playing in the garden and the next she'd be dragging him next door to visit James, Al and Lily. Her mother often wondered why she'd be perfectly happy trailing pieces of string around the kitchen for Crookshanks and the next running out to play Quidditch.

And all the impulsive people end up in Gryffindor, don't they? So why does she sit under that grubby hat and hear it roar that she belongs in the house of eagles and calm and logic when she's clearly a lion to blaze under red-and-gold? Why is her tie cool blue and shiny silver in family pictures next to all those blazing reds and glowing golds?

And then Lily comes along and becomes a snake and all the attention goes to her. Lucy tells Rose that it's perfectly okay to be different and that she'll thank the hat in later years, presenting her with a drawing of an eagle with red feathers and amber eyes and a blue-and-silver tie around its feathery neck. Rose smiles and hugs her cousin tightly.

Lorcan and Lysander are her saving grace in Ravenclaw, joking and laughing with her all the time, keeping her spirits up and making sure there's never a dull moment with them around. People tell her bookworms are Ravenclaws, but that can't be right, because Roxanne's a sucker for trashy romantic literature and she lounges in Gryffindor Tower. But does treating trashy romance like a drug really count as a bookworm?

Rose devours anything. Hell, she'd even read a menu in a restaurant or the same sign twenty times if there's nothing else. Magazines, career guides, romance, adventures, action-packed novels, leaflets about different creatures…anything and her eyes will flick back and forth, absorbing every word before carefully noting down a few comments in her fake-jewel-encrusted notebook.

They say it's her organisational skills that landed her under the eagle too. She will admit that her drawers are organised by type of garment and colour and her jewellery box is organised by the occasion to wear the specific piece for and she has a diary and an address book and a homework planner and plans her day to the nearest second - but surely this is the way of any teenage girl?

But she has fire blazing through her veins and she is impulsive as well as organised. A beautiful oxymoron wrapped up in freckled skin and flaming hair and cheeky grins and the smell of new books. She's a eagle with feathery flames surrounding her in a flickering halo, taking pride in the tie around her neck, her hair the colour of Gryffindor banners and the gold flashes in amber eyes.

And it's ohso typically Ravenclaw, but in her fifth year she falls in love with the black-and-white squares of a chessboard, the intricacies of the battles and the little pieces, each with their own weapon, that move along the chequered roads. Evenings in the common room are accompanied by a symphony of loud groans and incredulous shouts as Lorcan repeatedly loses to her. A date with those knights and bishops and queens become a common occurrence, quiet satisfaction accompanied by cups of tea and biscuits charmed out of the house elves by Lysander.

One night of exam-nerves-induced insomnia, she curiously reads one of Roxanne's trashy romances and decides to brew Amortentia to satisfy her curiosity about what it smells likes for her. The shimmering potion brews in her little cauldron for hours before the pearlescent mist rises from its swirling surface and the scent washes over her. It's a delicious mix of cocoa and jasmine and the sharp smell of turpentine. She doesn't know who it is, but it's certainly not the Scorpius Malfoy her cousins keep trying to set her up with.

She shakes violently waiting to walk into her Ordinary Wizarding Level examinations, having thrown up the one dry slice of toast Lysander practically shoved down her throat himself. She can't remember one thing she forced her tired brain to remember during the long nights of revision. Lucy is standing with and Fred, three familiar faces in a sea of red and gold, and her easy reassuring smile is nearly enough to make Rose relax.

The hall is silent but for the scratching of quills, the incessant ticking of the clock and the soft whispers of Professor Chalk's soles on the floor. She keeps her eyes on the paper the whole time and refuses to let herself see how her cousins are working on this examination. The words flow from the quill and she finishes with ten minutes to spare. Only when she's ticked off the examination in her mental plan of the day and packed her quills and ink neatly away does she allow herself to look around.

Albus is staring completely uncomprehendingly at the paper, clutching his quill like he expect the swan feather to come to life and scribble answers of its own accord. Lysander and Lorcan are sitting next to each other and conferring in whispers every time Professor Chalk looks the other way. Fred is sprawled across the tiny desk, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he writes slowly and deliberately. Lucy is sucking thoughtfully on the end of her quill, her hair pushed behind one ear and her eyebrows knitted together as she thinks.

"Time is up, quills down!" Professor Chalk calls across the room. There are loud groans and the creaks and bangs of a hundred students all gathering together their belongings.

"I couldn't do it, we weren't taught any of it!" Elise moans.

"That's because Chalk is a crap professor who couldn't teach us if his mummy's life depended on it," Kayla cackles before Rose's fist makes contact with her jaw.

"Don't talk about him like that!" she shouts. "What gives you the right to call him names? You don't know anything about him!" People are looking around at the unexpected sight of Rose Weasley breathing heavily in anger and standing over Kayla Parkinson who is frantically trying to stem the flow of blood from a broken nose.

"Well, if that isn't just so Ravenclaw of you," Fred drawls. "Punching someone in defence of a professor."

"Fuck off, Fred," Rose snarls, turning on her heel and walking away, smirking to herself. Punching Kayla had felt good, payback for all the years of bitching she'd smouldered inside over.

She's relaxing in the grounds after the blessed end of all the examinations - funny how months and months of preparation and a hundred sleepless nights had led to something lasting only two weeks - when she catches a waft of that cocoa-jasmine-turpentine scent she smelt on the Amortentia and Lucy collapses onto the grass beside her.

"Glad that's over," she remarks, rolling onto her stomach and dangling her fingers in the rippling water. "Now we can relax and enjoy the summer."

"Until our results come and we have to decide what to take next year," Rose teases. Lucy flicks water at her and Rose retorts by pushing her headfirst into the cold lake.

"I hate you," Lucy says through chattering teeth as she climbs out again.

"A quick drying charm will sort your clothes out!" Rose exclaims. "I don't hate you, Lucy."

"What's with the sudden affection?" Lucy asks, directing a jet of hot air from her wand to her clothes. "I was just joking."

"Can't a girl say she loves you once in a while?" Rose laughs.

"You never said you loved me," Lucy retorts. Rose squints in the sunlight and wonder where this Lucy comes from. Surely it's Ravenclaws who analyse every word of a conversation.

"Well, I do, because you're my cousin," she says in her decisive way. Lucy laughs, the sound merry and bright as the sun.

"I love you too, Rosie," she says and Rose hugs her on impulse. Within the embrace she smells the cocoa-jasmine-turpentine again and wonders where the hell it's coming from. It's going to drive her crazy until she figures it out, because she hates not knowing things.

"I'll see you later, Rose, there's an end-of-exams party in Gryffindor," Lucy says after twenty minutes of sunshine and dipping bare feet in the water and companionable silence. Rose watches Lucy leave with an unidentified weight on her chest. She takes her feet out of the water, watching rainbows flash across the grass as sunlight beams through each individual droplet.

That scent, that scent she can't place or connect with a face. The comforting cocoa and the sweet jasmine and the sharp turpentine. The scent that is around every time Lucy is near. Realisation flashes across her mind, so monumental she sways from side-to-side in shock. Amortentia smells different according to what attract each individual, that's what she's learnt from her textbooks. So if that smell is what attracts her, then the person that scent comes from attracts her.

So Lucy attracts her. Rose is attracted to another woman, who is also her cousin. It's insanity.

And just like that, everything she thinks she's ever known about life and love crumbles around her, to be replaced only by the knowing that she is in love with her cousin.

She jogs through the grounds with Lucy the next morning, the dew soaking her bare ankles and the pale grey dawn light filtering through the trees. They pause for breath by the Dragon Claw Willow and collapse, panting, onto the wet grass.

"Thank for keeping me company," Lucy says, flicking her hair irritably out of her eyes. "It gets a bit lonely in the mornings."

"No need to thank me, I woke up really early this morning," Rose says, brushing the issue off like it's just a speck of lint on her school robes. She doesn't add that she spent a sleepless night thinking of the pretty little brunette who's sprawled out on the grass next to her now, scraping errant strands of hair back into her band.

"Well, thanks for coming with me, anyway," Lucy says, fiddling with her watch to check the time. "We should make this a regular thing." Rose finds that her throat is dry all of a sudden and she can hardly breathe.

Rose Nymphadora Weasley has always been, still is and always will be a very impulsive person. Perhaps it's this trait that makes her lean forward and press a kiss to her cousin's lips. Or maybe it's just fate, destiny, some unnamed invisible force that wants them to admit the attraction.

But everything they say about opposites attracting and fire and ice somehow co-existing without destroying each other is flown out of the window. Because Rose blazes like fire and Lucy shines with light and they both burn but they kiss and everything is tipping off-balance.

"Rose, we're cousins," Lucy murmurs as they briefly part, like dancers swaying cautiously towards each other.

"I don't care," Rose whispers passionately. "I still love you. To me, Amortentia smells like cocoa and jasmine and turpentine and you."

"It's always smelt of new books and ink and roses for me," Lucy whispers, tearing up in her usual emotional way. "I still love you too."

They kiss for hours and the sun is shooting weak rays over the trees by the time Rose runs back up to the castle and takes a shower in the time slot she keeps for the activity, just to restore some delicate semblance of balance in her mind.

After Hogwarts is over and the years seem to be just another chapter in the book of their lives, they attend Victoire's wedding and Rose and Lucy smile across the pews and link hands as Victoire and Graham speak their vows.

"Remember, Rose, seize the day," Lucy murmurs as Lysander bears her off to dance. Rose looks after her and walks out in the crisp autumn air, opening her hand to reveal a small seed.

It's a jasmine flower, to remind her of Lucy. She plants it in the soil and showers it with water. She'll come back in five years and it will have flourished. Like her and Lucy will, one day.

This is dedicated in equal part to Blue, Kaye and Nicole. I love you three and I hope you enjoyed reading my first cousincest and third femslash :)

Thanks to Kaye for these prompts: splendour, flourish, impulsive, dew, seize the day, crumble & chess.

Please no favourites without a review, thank you :)