Instead of walking this time, Rose Apparated directly. She hated it, but she also hated the fear and maybe facing it would make it go away. It was worse the second time around though, and as her breath caught in her throat she heard, for the first time out of her nightmares, Hugo’s muffled sobs and screams. They bombarded her from blackness that surrounded her and if she could have moved, she would have struck out at the invisible horror that clawed at her heart.
She appeared in front of her Uncle Harry’s house, and it took all her self-control to keep from crying. Her heart was beating violently against her ribcage and she felt clammy, but she walked up the front steps anyway and knocked on the door.
Albus opened the door.
‘Hi,’ he said when he saw her. He took one good look at her face and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ muttered Rose, and she pushed past him, removing the Bubble Head Charm as she did. A few months back she would have hugged him “ that was a thing of the past. The disease not only spread through the air but by contact with an infected party as well.
‘I wanted to talk to you and James and Lily, Al. Where’s everyone?’ She smelled something good in the air. ‘Is Aunt Ginny cooking today?’
Albus followed her through the hallway. ‘No, Dad’s cooking. Mum’s up in bed. She wasn’t feeling well. Lily’s up in her room. I’ll call her, if you like. You can go to James’s room. I don’t know how much talking we’ll all do though.’ He stepped around her and ran up the stairs. He was on the final step when he said, over his shoulder, ‘Don’t forget the charm when you go in.’
‘I won’t,’ replied Rose. As if she could ever forget it.
She walked up the steps slowly. The kitchen was only a few feet away from the staircase and she could here Uncle Harry pattering about inside. On the fourth step she caught a glimpse of him. His looked weary. It reminded Rose of her own father “ when Hugo had been sick that was how he’d looked too. As she watched, he used his wand to send some dirty pots into the sink, where they began to wash themselves up. He turned towards the doorway and caught her watching him.
‘Hello Rose,’ he called, with a small smile.
Rose blushed, knowing she looked odd, hanging over the banister to get a better view. ‘Hi, Uncle Harry,’ she said, trying to cover up her embarrassment, before hurrying up the rest of the stairs.
James's room was the first from the staircase. Rose could hear Albus talking to Lily from her room farther down the hall as she pulled out her wand and re-did the Bubble Head Charm. She wondered if she should knock first or walk right in. Knocking might wake him… then she realized that as she was here to talk, she’d have to wake him eventually.
She knocked quietly from instinct but it seemed that James was already awake. She heard his voice and decided that he’d allowed entry. She opened the door an inch and squeezed through.
James’s room was dark. He hadn’t switched on any lights after the sun had set.
‘Should I turn a light on?’ she asked softly, wondering why she was whispering.
For a while, she only heard ragged breathing, but then James replied. ‘I… If it’s okay…’ His voice trailed off into nothingness.
Rose understood. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t need light. Really.’ It was true. She’d been in James’s room millions of times and unless he’d redecorated recently, she could maneuver herself with ease. She walked carefully across the carpet so that she wouldn’t trip over anything and then took a seat on the very edge of James’s bed, trying not to disturb him.
She could see his outline by the light of the moon that streamed through the window just over his bed. His back was to her, his face towards the light. Rose wanted to touch him, to hold his hand, to comfort him somehow, but she was scared to get that close. She didn’t want to catch the disease, no matter what. She didn’t want to die. Just being in this room was bad enough and if Uncle Harry or Aunt Ginny or her own parents found out they’d probably have something to say about it. Something about how she should never put herself at any extra risk, even for a cousin.
Feeling a spurt of rebelliousness at the thought of being scolded, Rose reached out and put a hand on James’s arm. His blanket was covering him, which probably decreased the risk, but Rose’s instincts still made her want to snatch her hand back as soon as she’d touched her cousin. She fought with her fear and kept her hand where it was.
James didn’t speak and Rose decided that he’d fallen asleep.
For some reason she spoke anyway. She knew it was stupid and reckless and that if what she was planning didn’t work then she’d be getting James’s hopes up. But she wanted so much to tell him something that would make him try to fight it. People just gave up now, when they were diagnosed. Fighting was useless, wasn’t it, when there was no doubt of death?
‘I found a cure,’ Rose said softly.
‘What?’
It wasn’t James who’d spoken; it was Albus. He and Lily had entered the room noiselessly, bubbles in place around their heads. She could see their faces in the dim light now that her eyes had adjusted. Albus looked shocked. Lily, however, looked like she could throttle Rose.
‘Why are you telling him that?’ she exclaimed in a whispered screech. ‘What are you going to get out of it? Are you trying to fill his head with lies?’
‘I wasn’t”’
‘Did you tell that to Hugo too? Did you get his hopes up? And now you’re here”’
‘SHUT UP!’
It was James. He’d sat up and was now facing Lily. Rose couldn’t see his face clearly but she guessed he was glaring at his sister. His breathing was loud and more labored than usual.
‘We’re not going to do this to each other, do you understand me?’ he said, facing Lily but speaking to all three of them. ‘We’re not going to do this.’ He slumped back on his pillow suddenly and Albus, Lily and Rose all jerked forward to help him, but he pushed them away by raising his hands. He faced Rose and now, the moonlight from the window splayed over his face.
Rose swallowed hard. He was pale and thin and his face was contorted with pain. It wasn’t as bad as it would get, but Rose could tell it was still hard to bear. She wished she could do something for him, she wished she could have done something for Hugo; she wished this had never happened.
‘So why’d you come Rose?’ asked James. Albus and Lily faced their cousin too.
It took Rose a moment to find her voice. ‘I” well, I found a cure. I did.’ She lifted up Snape’s book. ‘In here “ it belonged to Severus Snape, and there’re instructions written in there for a potion to cure a rare illness, and all the symptoms match what’s happening to everyone now. But it’s incomplete. And the only way I can complete it is to find Severus Snape and ask him to finish it.’
‘Snape’s dead,’ said Albus. ‘You know that.’
Rose fidgeted on the bed, well aware that what she was about to suggest would be met with looks that said “well, you’re nuts”. She barreled on anyway. ‘I know. I want to go back in time. I want to find Snape before he dies and make sure that he doesn’t “ doesn’t die, that is.’ Just the thought sent a shiver up her spine.
As she’d expected, James, Albus and Lily were all struck silent. Rose could see Albus’s eyebrows scraping his hairline.
It was Lily who spoke first. ‘You want to make an antidote?’
Rose smiled. She and Lily had always been able to guess what the other was thinking. Neither of them had a sister and the closest thing they’d ever get was each other. Her outburst earlier had shocked Rose because nothing of that sort had ever happened before. It was the stress, she told herself. Her brother was dying “ what could she expect? Rose hadn’t been terribly friendly when Hugo had been…
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘An antidote for Nagini’s poison. I need your help “ I’m no good at potion making.’
Albus snorted. ‘Rose, Lily and I are worse than you at it . Slughorn didn’t know what to make of us.’
The three of them turned simultaneously towards James. He had always been excellent with Potions. Slughorn hadn’t known what to make of him either. James looked at them, propped up in his bed, with a sardonic smile on his face. ‘I’d love to help you Rosie, but there’s a slight problem. I’m dying. It’ll only get worse as the days go on.’
‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Rose pleaded. ‘Just give me instructions. I’ll sit in here with you, everyday. I won’t leave till it’s done. You won’t have to move a muscle “ just help me prepare an antidote. Please. I want to make people better. I want to make you better.’
‘How do you know he’ll help, if you end up saving him?’ asked James, frowning at her. ‘I don’t think he’d agree.’
‘I know him better than you,’ blurted out Rose.
Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘Rose, you’ve read about the man. You don’t know him.’
‘But I think I’ll be able to get him to agree. Please. I just need help. I have to do this,’ Rose pleaded, gazing at each of her cousins in turn.
There was silence for a long time after that, but everyone knew it had been decided. Their silence was agreement enough. Rose prayed that it would not all be in vain.
It took what felt like forever to make the antidote. Rose had found a list of instructions for it while going through Snape’s book again the day after she and her cousins had decided what to do. Rose suspected that Severus had always feared an attack from Nagini, or that he’d managed to convince Voldemort somehow that they might someday need to save someone who Nagini had bitten “ Rose’s Uncle Harry was proof of this. Nagini had bitten him when he and Rose’s mother had gone to Godric’s Hollow and had Nagini managed to drag Harry away, Rose was positive Voldemort wouldn’t have wanted him dead on return “ he’d have wanted to kill Harry himself.
Whatever the case, it seemed that Snape had managed to get a hold of some of Nagini’s venom and make an antidote. James remarked, after looking over the instructions, that the antidote was somewhat common; he’d read about it before in one of his books and the fact was, it had to be common “ Harry had gotten bitten and Hermione had managed to heal him. Had Nagini’s poison been special, Rose’s mother would never have had any chance of saving Harry.
To check James’s theory, and ensure that the antidote would work, Rose managed to corner her mother and weasel her healing methods out of her. She admitted that she’d used a potion that, at that time, hadn’t been terribly common. The same snake that had bitten Uncle Harry two years before the Godric’s Hollow incident had attacked Rose’s grandfather and the Healers had managed to concoct an antidote. Hermione had gotten hold of some of it and taken it along when she, Harry and Ron had left home to find the Horcruxes.
Hermione asked why Rose wanted to know and when she explained (not untruthfully) that she’d seen an antidote for the snake’s poison in Snape’s notes, Hermione said she wouldn’t have been surprised if Severus Snape himself had sent the potion and instructions on how to make it to the Healers of St. Mungo’s, when Grandpa Weasley had been injured.
There was much, she said, they didn’t know about the man. Rose heartily agreed.
The potion was finished a fortnight later. It would have been done much earlier but Rose had been unable to get some of the ingredients immediately. Apparently, the Apothecary owner in Diagon Alley didn’t sell Newt’s Root to eighteen-year-old girls, even if they were related to Harry Potter. It had taken a lot of cajoling and a note from Harry Potter himself to get all the ingredients, but as Albus pointed out while they’d been adding Harry’s signature to the note, it would all be worth it in the end. No one would care about a bit of forgery if they cured the wizarding world of this epidemic.
Alongside the antidote, Rose had been brewing another potion: the Polyjuice Potion. She needed a Time-Turner and there was really only one way to get it.
‘I swear, I’m never doing that again,’ said Albus, storming into James’s room, where James and Rose were busy admiring Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. He thrust a Time-Turner into Rose’s hand as Lily burst into the room, her face red as a tomato.
‘Do you know Dad almost caught me?’ she screeched, wide-eyed, at the others. She leaned against the door, gasping, as the remaining effects of the Polyjuice Potion wore off. Rose watched, fascinated, as her father morphed back into her cousin. Her hair was long again, her eyes brown.
Albus’s transformation back into himself has less spectacular “ he looked so much like Harry as it was.
The two siblings flopped down on the carpet, still feeling the adrenaline rushing through their veins.
‘No one suspected though, did they?’ asked Rose.
Albus shook his head and when he’d caught his breath properly replied, ‘Nah. We told them the Auror Office needed a Time-Turner for a special mission. The Unspeakable we met never even blinked. Lucky Dad’s head of office, otherwise we’d have needed some sort of Letter of Approval.’
Lily caught her second wind and said, ‘I never want to be a boy again. Especially not a boy who happens to be my Uncle. You have no idea how it feels when”’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Rose cried out, covering her ears quickly, as Albus and James snickered. ‘That’s my dad you’re talking about! I don’t want to hear anything gross, I’ll never be able to look at him the same way again!’
‘Well, I never will be either,’ said Lily, shuddering.
‘Lucky we’ve had the Invisibility Cloak all this time,’ remarked Albus.
Rose nodded. She needed the Cloak to ensure no one saw her and if she had asked Uncle Harry, there would have been too many unanswerable questions. James had nicked the Cloak off his father in his third year, and Harry had never really taken it back.
Everything was set.
Rose took a deep breath, looking around at her cousins. ‘Thanks for helping me out here.’
James rolled his eyes. ‘Did you ever think we wouldn’t help? We’re in this together.’
Rose was about to reply when James’s breath caught in his throat. With shocking suddenness, his entire body began to convulse and shake. Rose had seen this with Hugo but it didn’t stop her from jumping to her feet. Her heart was somewhere in the region of her throat.
Albus and Lily sprang to their feet.
‘Should I get Dad?’ Albus demanded.
It was over before Rose had time to register Al’s words.
James collapsed onto his mattress, no longer rigid. He face was twisted with pain and tears had leaked unasked out of his eyes. Rose could see the effort it took not to scream out.
‘Get the cure, Rose,’ cried James through clenched teeth. ‘Get the cure because I can’t keep this up. I just can’t.’