A/N: New story!(Clearly.) Credit for this whole story goes to Pal the Bad Ass because she's awesome and motivated me to do this whole thing. I probably never would have started this without her. So really, this can be classified as a collaboration. And i'm fairly sure that if i don't update, she will beat me with her guitar. Also, to the cheesy Bollywood flick i was watching when I got this idea. (Even though that movie made no sense. It served to entertain, at any rate.)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything JKR owns unless we have the same shirt or pair of earrings. Highly unlikely.

AUTHOR'S NOTE (27/8/2014): Yo, guys. This is to all you readers out there. If any of you are artists and enjoy this story, then please let me know if you'd be interested in making a cover for it. My artistic abilities are unfortunately restricted to me drawing stick men and potatoes, and somehow neither really symbolise this story. I will, of course, give you full credit and recommend you to anyone who enquires. Thanks for reading!

Chapter one

Rose concentrated on the clacking sound her heels made as she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.

Just a bit further, she told herself. Almost there.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. If only she hadn't had so much to drink, she could have simply apparated home. She'd have been tucked into bed by now, reading a cheap romance novel or even better, sleeping. But work had been so hectic lately and Dom had been so insistent that she take a break and kick back and relax for once. It had been too tempting , downing one firewhisky after another; her throat was still burning.

Looking up blearily, she realized she had no idea where she was. The alley she was in could be anywhere, near her flat or on the other side of the city. An alley was an alley. They all looked the same, infuriatingly enough. Why on earth didn't someone name them? This one could be called Stinkin' Piss Bucket because that was precisely what it smelt like.

She stumbled forward, too tired to move in any other direction. Rose concentrated on the sound of her shoes again. Clack, Clack, Clack. Right foot, left foot. The sound seemed so distinct from her own person somehow, as if she weren't the one making that annoying tapping sound or letting out that hideous shriek…

Rose's head snapped up as the scream reverberating around the narrow alley finally registered. Not even bothering to stop and think for a second, she ran forward, drawing her wand, as she went. Her senses seemed to clear almost immediately. The scene that greeted her eyes was like something out of a muggle horror film. Except in the muggle film, nobody would have been getting crucio-edand sectumsempra-edat the same time. Or at any time at all.

The man on the floor was writhing in pain, his shrieks so loud and so continuous that they hardly seemed like screams at all, his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets, only the whites visible. He lay in a pool of his own blood, spreading so far and so quickly that it was staining the bottoms of her stilettos red, though she was a good five feet away.

Raising her wand, she cast the first spell that came to mind:

"Protego!"

The wall of energy expanded between the victim and his assailant, and broke the curse's hold on him. The man, his attacker, whirled around to face her and he let out a growl of unsuppressed anger when he saw her. She couldn't see his whole face because- and as she realized this, her stomach gave a nasty jolt- he was wearing a death eater mask.

It was absurd. Impossible. What were the odds that she would just stumble across one of the Death Eater killings? The killer wasn't a death eater, though. No. He was someone who killed former death eaters. Everyone had heard about the string of murders this one psycho had left behind him. They were supposed to be untraceable, never witnessed. Or maybe, they were never witnessed because the unfortunate bystander simply never lived long enough to report anything. Her stomach roiled at the thought.

Heart pounding, she raised her wand, ready to defend herself till her last breath. Even in her inebriated state, she was sure she could fend him off long enough to escape. The man on the ground was still screaming, she realized. The curse had been lifted more than a minute ago but he seemed unaware of anything but his agony and the pool of blood he lay in.

The pseudo Death Eater across her didn't raise his wand though. His arm hung limply at his side, as if he wasn't even thinking of attacking, as if he thought she couldn't possibly pose a threat. Well he had another think coming. She slashed her wand viciously through the air and a purple jet of light flew at him. He barely moved his wand arm, but a shield blocked her spell, and it dissipated.

He turned to leave, looking extremely casual about it as he went. At the last possible moment though, just before he dissapparated, he turned to look at her directly and his lips moved soundlessly in a familiar pattern, spelling out something she had heard almost every day of her life:

Rose Weasley.

And then he was gone.

xxxxxxx

Rose lifted her head as the healer entered her room. She was sitting on a bed in one of the wards in St. Mungo's. She'd been in too much of a daze to notice which when she'd come in.

"You're doing fine," the healer said, checking the chart next to her bed and making some changes with his wand. "You can leave anytime. It was just a bit of shock."

"About bloody time..."Rose muttered. She'd sent a patronus to the healers, not wanting to apparate with the injured man. She'd tried to get away after handing him over but they'd insisted she come along just in case. Plus they'd probably checked up her background to see if there was any chance of her being a raving lunatic who tortured innocent people, called the authorities and then hung around for the fun of it.

Rose stood up, slipping her shoes on reluctantly. "How's the guy I came in with?"

The healer glanced up from his notes. "Oh his condition is stable now. Quite a lot of damage though. Someone out there was using seriously dark magic. He owes his life to you."

Rose grimaced. "Great. Figure out who he is?"

He shrugged. "No clue. I suppose we'll just have to wait for him to wake up. Hopefully his mind is intact."

Rose nodded and left the ward, thanking the healer as she went. It was late- really late. The giant red display of numbers in the reception showed a glowing 3:57 AM.

Compared to before though, she wasn't tired at all. She was still trying to get her mind around the fact that she'd just witnessed a bloke being tortured to death. Well, okay, so she was a curse breaker for Gringott's(Like her Uncle Bill) and had seen her fair share of curses but she'd never actually seen one person using them on another. Somehow it was less personal if it was an old pyramid shooting curses at you rather than some dude in a mask.

She grabbed a handful of powder and floo-ed back to her apartment.

The spinning motion made her already confused mind whirl even faster and she was asleep within moments of collapsing on her bed.

xxxxxxx

Rose chewed her lip thoughtfully, hands on her hips and head cocked to the side. Her door's lock was broken. Broken as in, it wasn't there. At all. And that was really saying something considering she'd put up basic wards on the door same as any other magical person living in a muggle inhabited area.

So clearly it wasn't one of her neighbours or a vandal unless they were particularly adept at getting past spells and running off with locks, not bothering with the stuff in her apartment.

It was strange really. Everything was still there- though she didn't recall leaving everything in such a mess. Everything was where she'd left it but it all looked a bit haphazard anyway, as if someone had picked everything up and then put it down again.

She tapped her wand against her palm. There wasn't much she could do about it. Maybe it was a burglar who'd been interrupted halfway through the job or something. Maybe some stuff really was missing but she just hadn't noticed it.

She settled on recasting the wards, putting up some stronger ones and basically just forgetting about it. Tucking the wand back into the waistband of her jeans, she slipped on flats and left for work.

xxxxxxx

Boring. Boring. Boring.

Rose thumped her head on the desk in front of her and the goblin next to her shot her a nasty look. Rose stuck out her tongue at him when he looked away.

Why was she stuck here again? Shouldn't she be in some exotic cursed country fighting off hordes of bloodthirsty Inferi or breaking through the curses surrounding the pyramid of Abu Rawash?

It was a particularly interesting case, the Abu Rawash one- the pyramid of Djedefre. Rose called it the Rawash pyramid because life was just easier that way. There were a whole bunch of wards around the pyramid so that to muggles and even wizards, for that matter, the pyramid looked like a heap of ruins. She'd been on an expedition there last year. Nobody had expected her team to find anything exciting over there which was precisely why they'd been sent in the first place- to get them out of the way. But then her team had discovered the glamour wards around the pyramid and cracked them and now the whole world was all over it, trying to figure out its mysteries.

Her team had been pushed to the sidelines and told to bugger off, that they'd done a nice job, gotten lucky and that they could go buy themselves something nice with their bonuses. Rose, who'd been leader of the expedition, was particularly indignant about the short shrift they got and had stirred up all kinds of trouble about it. Eventually, her Uncle Bill had stepped in and assured her that he would get her and her team on the next party that went there.

And yet, here she was, six months later, still sitting at a desk in Gringotts, solving minor issues for the bank. She was nothing more than a handyman, like that plumber bloke her mother had told her about.

Rose sucked on the end of her sugar quill, eyes following the seconds hand of the giant clock in front of her. An agonizing amount of time later, her shift was over. She rushed out, apparating home, ready to kick back and relax in the bathtub and order some Chinese food.

She knew something was wrong the moment she saw her front door. It was hanging limply from a single hinge, looking sinister and twisted. She pushed it open carefully, drawing her wand.

Moving into the hallway, she looked around her, aghast at the chaos surrounding her. Chairs and tables overturned, sofas lying on their sides with their stuffing spilling out, a sticky black substance coating surfaces as if a tar bomb had gone off in there. Even the windows were smashed in and the contents of all the drawers were all over the place.

She couldn't let her family find out about this; they'd go completely loco. They'd probably lock her up in a 'secure environment' to make sure nobody could kill her or whatever. Rose wasn't stupid. It had become pretty damn obvious that this wasn't the work of a petty thief. It most likely had something to do with the man she had seen last night. Which meant it was personal, and it was dangerous.

Casting a quick Homenum Revelio, she moved further into the house, kicking broken objects out of the way. All the rooms were the same. Whoever had been here had left by now. She saw with dismay that even the clothes in her cupboard had been ripped and flung about the place. She'd have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Shopping=Money=Broke.

She saw something move out of the corner of her eye and whipped around, letting out a shaky laugh when she saw it was just her reflection. She moved her wand closer to the mirror, lighting the tip; there was something written on it.

Rose stared, wide eyed, at the missive in front of her, scrawled with the sticky black substance. It simply read: Avada Kedavra, Mudblood.

That was it. Three words. But it certainly got the point across.

"Rosie? Oh my God, what the- ROSE?"

Rose turned towards the main door and ran out, nearly smacking into a horrified Dominique, staring about her, jaw wide open.

Rose's heart took a one-way trip to the bottom of her feet.

"Rose, what the fuck did I miss?"

So much for not letting her family find out.

A/N: Review please! Seriously though, leave a comment. The updates on this one are going to be slow compared to Messing Up 101 because, well, because I need to study or i will fail and spend the rest of my life with a boring desk job at a fast food chain. (Or as the sweeper or something.) Anyway, a big thanks to Pal the Bad Ass again because she is awesome and i love her (Platonically, Pal. Platonically.)