Forever and a Day ~ James Potter

Benjamin Charles Artois

Chapter Forty

Friday 6th August 1976 – 16:06 - waxing moon

"Ruslan! Get ze 'ouse Elf 'ere! Now!" Eugenie Artois was screeching across the Manor, her voice amplified by a spell as her heavy footsteps dashed past Rosie's bedroom, causing a little bit of dust to fall from her white-painted doorframe onto the cream carpet.

She lowered the biography that Charles had bought her for Christmas from in front of her face to her chest for a few seconds and raised her eyebrows, realising that this unruly behaviour from the usually put-together and discreet woman meant that she was about to have a baby brother or sister (she had been praying to Merlin for weeks that it would be a sister for a multitude of reasons). Still, all she could do was shrug to herself and continue reading, shoving the book back in front of her face and cosying into her green blanket, glad that she'd drawn the emerald curtains on her bedposts closed.

It had been precisely four agonisingly long weeks since Rosie had arrived back at Suvorov Manor, and it was just as dreadfully dull as she had imagined it would be. Somehow even with the so-called 'excitement' of preparing to have a new baby in the house and the worry of her Grandpére's mysterious health problems, the first month of Rosie's summer holidays had still managed to be one of the most scrupulous experiences of her life.

Although she had only ever chosen to leave her bedroom for meals or to go for a walk on the grounds, Rosie had seen that her mother had become more irritable by the day, but the good thing about this year was that she was very easy to outrun when she threatened to curse someone.

Rosie's father had spent more time in his office working than ever before, looking increasingly stressed whenever she saw him storming around the house. She had only actually seen her Grandpére three times, including the hour that she had spent speaking to him on her first night back while he fell in and out of sleep, holding her hand and smiling faintly at the details she told him about her time at school.

Finally, three days prior, something genuinely interesting had happened, even if it meant that the rest of Rosie's time at home, until she could leave, would be even more miserable...

*

Tuesday 3rd August 1976 – 14:15 – waxing moon

Rosie was breaking her usual habit of lounging around on her bed with a book in a nightgown that afternoon by dragging herself out of her bedroom – for something other than wolfing down a necessary meal as quickly as she could before running back upstairs or being told she needed to visit Grimmauld Place to be forced into conversation with Regulus Black.

This time, she was wandering pleasantly through the stateroom gallery on the third floor, admiring the painting of the Greek Goddess Sappho as she ran a comb through her hair.

She knew that on Tuesdays, her mother liked to take tea with Walburga in London. Rosie would be told to go with her, so she decided to make herself look presentable enough for her mother to feel like she could trust her to go to another part of the house where she would then try and find Sirius, who hadn't been allowed out of his bedroom whenever she visited since the two older women had convinced themselves that he'd lured Rosie away from her home at Christmas.

Just as she was about to move on to the Pre-Raphaelite section of the long narrow gallery, there was a tapping on one of the windows that made her almost jump out of her skin, getting her hair tangled in the comb as her hand slipped. She managed to tug it free with one hand while she used the other to pull open the bottom half of the window, where an elegant eagle owl was beating its wings with a small scroll of parchment stuffed in its mouth.