Chapter Text
Rose should’ve known it was too good to be true.
“You didn’t really think that getting rid of the wand and stone would stop you from being Master of Death, did you?”
She was in King’s Cross purgatory again, only this time instead of meeting Dumbledore she’d found a man… thing… with dark hair and pure black eyes – no iris, no sclera, just black. It was supremely unnerving. She felt the weight of his regard despite that.
The thing shook its head, sitting on a nearby bench and patting the space next to it in a terrifyingly human way.
“Sit down,” it said, and oh fuck it couldn’t be –
“I’m Death.”
Fucking hell.
Fucking hell.
Rose, filled with anger and frustration and confusion, screamed with everything she had. As her vision cleared, she saw her mother smiling down at her.
“She’s got your lungs,” a man said, voice tired but fond.
And oh fuck, she knew that voice, she’d summoned it with the Resurrection Stone that night she’d walked into the Forbidden Forest.
“She’s got my hair too,” Lily said proudly.
“Well I suppose it’s only fair, Harry’s got mine after all.”
(“Some things are fixed,” Death told her. “You’ve got some leeway with Fate but there are some things that have to happen.”
“Why?” She’d asked.
“Sweetheart, I’d explode your brain if I tried to explain.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“Why yes, yes I am.”)
“Let’s hope he doesn’t get anything else of yours.”
“Excuse you, Evans, I’m an exemplary specimen of a man.”
“If you insist, darling.”
Her parents’ death was probably fixed.
(“How do I know what’s fixed and what’s not?”
“You don’t. You aren’t a seer, but you might be able to see the way Fate rearranges things to keep certain things the same. Some things are too important to change.”)
But she’d be damned if she didn’t try.
It was easier than she’d expected to be a baby.
(“What would be the point of sending you to another universe if you spend the whole time locked up in Saint Mungo’s?”)
Her self-control was nonexistent. The combination of her adult mind, capable of complex emotions like worry, and infant instincts, which were only meant to handle base emotions like fear and happiness, meant that Rose existed in a perpetual state of screaming. She felt quite sorry for her parents, watching them grow increasingly sleep-deprived for the first few days. On the fourth day, Lily found a recipe for the Quieting Potion, a lesser-known method of calming infants. Calming Drafts and Dreamless Sleep were too potent, and the Quieting Potion couldn’t be used too often anyway. Nonetheless, her twice-weekly doses gave her parents a much-needed reprieve, as did Sirius’ babysitting.
In fact, Sirius proved to be a very effective babysitter. He’d been nervous and downright terrified in the beginning, and so defaulted to humor as entertainment. Lily was excellent at calming Rose and filling her with love, but Sirius was excellent at making Rose laugh. He made faces and tickled her, and a part of Rose wondered if he’d ever acted like this with Regulus. She tried not to think about that very much though, since that was an excellent way to send her into another screaming fit.
It was lucky that Harry turned out to be Rose’s opposite. He was a gentle and well-behaved baby, only crying when they were separated. When he learned enough motor control to do more than flail his limbs, he took to holding her hand during her screaming fits. His happy gurgles and obvious affection never failed to make her heart ache with affection, pushing out the worry and fear and dread.
She’d always been envious of Ron, of his parents and siblings and loving home. Now, for the first time she could remember, she had all three. She could watch, cradled in James’ arms, as her parents laughed and bantered and teased each other. She could feel the warmth of Harry’s hand in hers when she woke from a nightmare, eyes wide and earnest and bright. She could hear Sirius’ laughter as he held her aloft and raced through the manor, making flying noises and adding commentary, dodging James as he ran past him with Harry, doing an abrupt one-eighty when Lily emerged, looming like a vengeful goddess at her interrupted nap.
She tried to fix each moment in her memory, because if the death of her parents and the imprisonment of Sirius were fixed events were fixed then this would be all she had of them. She needed to remember for Harry, in case she was the only one left who could. (In case they ended up in the cupboard under the stairs with only each other and the spiders for company)
(“Important to whom?”
“Fate, darling.”
“Well, Fate can go fuck itself.”)
It was agonizing to watch as events unfolded. Although she was a baby, even she noticed when they moved from Potter Manor to the cottage in Godric’s Hollow. She didn’t remember how long it took between the move, the casting of the Fidelius, and Pettigrew’s betrayal. It didn’t help that she didn’t have much of a sense of time – she knew when she and Harry had had their first birthday, but in the months between July 31st and Halloween (Samhain, she corrected, remembering) she lost track of the days.
She tried to show her aversion to Pettigrew, but she screamed so often anyways that it was unremarked upon. When she began to speak, finally having the motor control to move her lips and tongue, her cries of “ra’ bad” and “no” were brushed off. She was a baby, after all. Anything else she tried to say – he betrays you, Death Eater, don’t trust him – came out as nothing but childish babbles.
This is what Death meant, she thought, when he told me some things were fixed.
In her past life, Dumbledore had told her that it’d been her mother’s love that had protected her. Now; watching Lily as she tore through the libraries of the Potters and Blacks and Hogwarts, stumbling into the nursery with shadows under her eyes and ink on her fingers, mumbling under her breath as she measured and cast and bled; she knew he’d been correct, but probably not in the way he’d expected.
The power he knows not, she thought ruefully. A mother’s love.
And Lily Potter, she added, because just as not all mothers loved their children, not all mothers were forewarned of their deaths and capable and willing to delve into the Darkest, most obscure magicks to save them.
Rose watched as her mother – her ruthless, brilliant, muggleborn mother – covered their nursery in runes and sigils. She held bonfires in the center of the room, burning sage and mugwort and mint, casting the blood of herself and James into the fire until it sparked, blazing a blinding white for three days and three nights. She chanted, in Latin and Gaelic and Celtic, until the air was heavy and thrumming with her magic and she collapsed, spent.
“I hope I won’t need this,” she whispered, bending over their crib. She kissed first Harry, then Rose, her long red hair smelling of iron and smoke. “Daddy and I would die for you, darlings. We would gladly give up our lives, our futures, for yours. We love you both so, so much.”
Tears dripped down her face. Lily straightened and stepped back, letting her tears mix with the runes drawn in blood on the floor.
Samhain night, when the veil between Life and Death was at its thinnest, the nursery looked deceptively innocent. The runes had vanished, the bonfires left no scorch marks, and only the faint smell of mint in the air indicated that anything had ever happened at all.
“Not my children! Take me, kill me instead –“
“Step aside, foolish girl.”
“Not my children, not my children, please, I’ll do anything –“
“Step aside!”
“No, take me instead – “
“STEP ASIDE.”
“I WON’T!”
A flash of green light. A thud. And, unnoticed by Voldemort, a quiet hum of power in the air.