Ballad of Fallen Angels

[Rose]

The Three Broomsticks was comfortably packed with students on the frigid December evening as the snow fell down lightly, in big soft clumps, some of which were still melting into her long blond-red mane. The clatter of plates and glasses was a typical noise to her now, as her room above the Leaky Cauldron had her going down in the evenings for a drink. Supper, however, was something conducted usually outside the walls of the tavern, though she still had a taste for fries and salads on occasion. Tonight, she had decided, she needed a change of settings. After all, it was a weekend evening and the students at the nearby Magic Horizons probably wanted to get in as much fun time before the long haul of the week ahead.

She sat in a booth with her half finished butterbeer, her fingertips tracing absently around the rim over and over, her eyes on the shifting sea of students. Interesting, she thought, that half of them looked older then her, yet she was their elder. It was a concept she understood in a distant sort of way, only being forced to deal with it when she was staring at it in the face.

She had eaten an early dinner with her older brother Ice a few weekends ago, as he was there on a bit of work (he was working for an independent company working on irregular reactions in common potions. He was developing a theory with his colleagues, claiming that it all had to do with magic density and possibly, even, something to do with the tides) Two seventh year girls had been ahead of her at the bar, being raucous - probably because the bartender had earlier slipped them a firewhiskey - and one of the idiots had spilled her entire drink down the front of Rose's shirt. The girl had giggled, hiccuped, and gurgled out a short, "Oh, sorry, sweetie!" She was surprised she didn't snap the flimsy thing's neck.

The snow kept falling outside and Rose scratched out a drawing of a flower on her napkin, chewing on her pockmarked bottom lip.

[Ace]

Ace left the Hog's Head in a bad mood. He had been staying at the Hog's Head for six months now, and he had become something of a favourite in the bar downstairs. His usual firewhisky hour was now constantly being interrupted by someone writing a journal on Vampirism, or a lady with a fetish for the undead batting her eyelashes at him - and, on the odd occasion, even a deathwishing kid seeking him out to put their miserable little life to an end. He was in such a bad mood this evening that he knew he wouldn't have been able to say no, so he had left the bar in search of more anonymous persuits.

Ace approached the Three Broomsticks warily; being a Professor had given him some unexpected popularity at the school, too, and this pub was likely to full of students... and, on the opening the door, he proved himself right. He brushed the lightly fallen snowflakes off his shoulders and shook them out of his tousled hair, and walked up to the bar, ordering his usual.

As he waited for his drink to arrive, he turned and leaned against the bar, scanning the crowd for anyone he knew and should therefore avoid. He saw a few...

Wait.

Everything inside of Ace suddenly seemed to stop - yes, he was a Vampire, so biologically speaking everything inside him had already stopped - but an odd chill grabbed him, somewhere between his heart and his stomach. He felt a sudden urge to run, but he was entirely frozen from head to toe, his wide green gaze fixated on the back of the head of someone he thought he would never see again.

His wife.

"Oi, mate, you paying for this or what?" snarled the irate bartender. Stammering an apology, the hapless Vampire shoved far too much silver into the bartender's hand and downed the drink. "Another one please," he whispered, his eyes watering. He had the feeling he was going to need it. Oh yes, there was no way he was walking over there sober.

[Rose]

Grimacing slightly as an incredibly warped sprite raised out of the picture of the flower, Rose crumpled the napkin in her palm and flicked it across the table. It toppled over onto the empty cushion across from her. She was getting used to making conversation with empty seats. Her stomach ached dully - she hadn't had too much to digest for the past few days, and pig's blood could only get you so far.

"Excuse me, Miss?" Rose jumped and turned to fix the tentative young waitress - a girl at the school who wanted to earn some spending money, most likely - with a glower. The waitress straightened her apron nervously and held up her notepad. "You need to order something or I'm not allowed to give you a seat." Rose looked at her glass of butterbeer, which was quite suddenly drained. She sighed and slid the glass down the table. The waitress, looking sick with relief, took the glass and ran off. To be sired at sixteen, her head was crowded with dark humor. Not even old enough to order a firewhiskey.

She didn't notice the sound of the door clacking behind another cold person, but the group of girls sitting in the next booth over craned their necks and immediately started to giggle.

"There he is!" One whispered shrilly. "I thought he only ever went to the Hog's Head after classes!" said another. "Oh, he's so beautiful! And I heard his class actually got to brew the Polyjuice Potion the other day!" Rose smiled slightly, trying to remember who the Potions professor had been when she had last been there. She couldn't remember. She turned her head to see who was recieving such high praise, as a Potions professor is rarely the most memorable people (they all smelled a bit like the Dungeon they held their classes in, she thought) and found him, leaning gainst the bar. The poor quality of the tavern light fell across his face and her molecules jammed together in painful recognition - in such a way that would have been heart-stopping, if her heart hadn't already stopped.

Her stomach dropped to her knees and she gripped her fingers around the edge of the table. Her head rang. She had always just assumed that he had left as well. Who could stay, after all? But then - she looked out the window and eyed the timeless landscape with an uneasy comfort. Who ever left, either?

[Ace]

Ace downed his third shot of the foul firewhisky and shoved the glass back to the bartender. The man eyed him warily, perhaps realising who this man was. "You wantin' another one then?" he grunted, far more politely than earlier.

Ace raised his alarmingly green eyes - now slightly bloodshot - and nodded slowly. "Yeah. Get me two, please."

Ace waited as the bartender shuffled around the bar making the drinks, letting his thoughts drift off into the darkest corners of his memory, inspecting its previously untouched contents as if in a dream. It seemed so long ago, when he had stood in front of the entire school - his school, and proclaimed to love the slip of a girl he had only known for six months, for the rest of his life. Then he had...

No. Even now, it was too much to think about.

Ace nodded as the bartender placed the drinks down on the bar, not even able to speak. He picked up the drinks and walked, unsteadily (though not from drink) to where the strawberry-blonde headed Vampire was sitting. He sat down and placed the drinks on the table, pushing one across to her. He could not raise his gaze to meet hers, or say a word. Where would he even begin...

[Rose]

She had been too intent to stare downward in frantic silence to notice him until the cold glass of firewhiskey brushed against her knuckles. Her shoulders stiffened, but only slightly. She had thought that if he had seen her, he wouldn't be able to resist. Raising her eyes to trail along his jaw and up to the same, always slightly mussed, blonde hair, she knew she couldn't either.

She slid the glass closer to the edge of the table slowly, peering down. The slightly strong aroma tugged a wayward smile across her lips.

"Finally," she said, having developed a fondness for the gallow's humor since the two had last met eyes. "Someone over the legal drinking cut-off." She curled her fingers around the drink but didn't taste it. Her eyes were on his face, seeking the gaze he refused to give her. Those green eyes had once sent shivers down her spine. The small girl she kept preserved within the tiniest corner of herself was vexed at her allowance for this to happen. Her mind was in disarray, uncertain of which her should govern her thoughts or words or actions. For a flashing moment she was sixteen, in a wedding gown. Her hands weren't shaking, but only because she willed them with all her might not to.

She allowed her innocence to stick up a ruffled half smile on the corner of her mouth. "How are you?" She whispered.

[Ace]

Ace kept his gaze firmly on the drink before him, trying to block out the thoughts that came screaming into his head at the sound of her voice, being close enough to lose himself in her scent that was so familiar. But he noticed the change, too. There was that hollow tone that came to any undead creature sooner or later that he had never heard in her voice before, telling him what he had feared - that she, like the rest of her kind, was bitter about her existence as an Immortal.

"How am I." Ace tried to smile but his lips were having trouble making the movements necessary. He shook his head slowly instead, trying to find the words to express how utterly lost for words he was. "I have absolutely no idea. Up until about five minutes ago I was fine despite being in a foul mood, but now? No idea. No idea whatsoever."

He gripped his drink a little tighter and took a gulp of it, then stared into its coppery depths. He knew she was summoning up something long forgotten inside of her to be able to sit with him now, something of the old Rose, the darling sweet Rosie he had known before...

"And you?" asked Ace, raised his eyes to meet hers finally, feeling the inevitable shock ripple through him at being lost in her eyes once again. "How are you?"

[Rose]

Rose held his eyes, feeling the same itchy eyed heat like she was staring directly into the sun. Except, of course, she didn't dissolve before his eyes. Her gaze was slowly settling into his, a cat stretching to see how far it could go.

"I," her eyes finally slipped back down to the table. She ran a slender, moonlit fingertip round and around the rim of the glass. Her hesitation hung in the air. There was an ocean of words she could choose from. She sighed, pinching her fingertips to remind herself that this was real.

"I'm hanging in there." Her smile wavered uncomfortably. She had meant to sound more casual then she had managed. She finally picked up her drink and took a long drink. She needed something, anything, to counteract the fast and furious storm of memories pouring on top of the pair, measuring the silence of only a scarce years - probably not a dent in Ace's eternity. She wondered, at the end of an eternity, if she would remember...her knuckles grew a shade whiter on her glass and she forced herself to think of the current - of the person sitting across from them with so many words left unspoken.

"You're the new Potions professor, I heard." She blinked at him uncertainly. Ice had been considering the position, she remembered him saying, a year or two back. She leaned her elbows on the table. Who are you?

[Ace]

Their gaze was held for moments, moments in which Ace knew she felt as breathless as he did - she had not expected to see him again. Especially not here. Not after what happened to his own school. There was a question lingering in her eyes, one Ace had almost asked her himself. Who were they now? What little things had moved them so far apart from who they had once been?

Ace nodded in silent agreement to her statement. He was the Potions Professor. But was that who he was?

"Claire offered me the position a few months ago. I only came back here to help save MH from some dark lord who kidnapped Wilting Rose - but yeah. I couldn't walk away from here again. Not again." Ace clamped his mouth shut, sure he'd said too much. Rose had no idea what had happened to him here - she'd left long before he literally went through hell and back, so she wouldn't understand. But where to begin telling the story?

Ace closed his eyes, trying to block it all out. God, it was too much. "So... so..." the Vampire trailed off, shaking his head slowly and opening his eyes again. "... where did you go, Rosie? What... where..." He fell into another silence. This night was going to be full of them.

[Rose]

Rose chewed on her bottom lip gingerly - it was a habit she had picked up, unusually, after she acquired the dangerous teeth. Rosie. She wasn't sure where to begin. She slid her jacket off her shoulders too carefully and laid it tenderly on the cushion beside her.

"I...have been rather busy, to be honest." She said, her voice not quite carrying. She cleared her throat. "I've made myself busy. A few summers ago I knocked off all the classes I needed to graduate at this quaint little academy in the middle of nowhere." You gave me that idea. "And I've been... traveling." She was hardly surprised to hear the news about Wilting Rose. Having a drink with Kiki two months ago, who said it was rather hectic, made Rose start picking up the Daily Prophet again.

The deep, aching dread in her stomach told her she was lying to him. She had graduated a few summers ago, she had taken a series of schooner trips to places of unknown. But where had Little Miss Murphy gone? That was the question she avoided answering. She wasn't sure, and while her new self was intoxicating in her power, that which was pure, untouched innocence, was gone. She understood why so many vampires looked hollow. She met his eyes again with intensity. You have had centuries to cope with hollowness. I've had a few years. Don't look at me like I've shot your pony.

She drummed her fingertips on the table. "How is everyone?" Her eyes asked: Where is everyone?

[Ace]

Ace nodded again at her answer, though he could tell she was skirting around the real question. It was a funny thing, thought Ace distantly as he heard Rose's next question but knew the one behind it, how people never ask the questions they really want the answers to...

"Everyone?" Here, for the first time, was a smile. However spacey it might have looked on Ace's uncertain face. "Who counts as everyone... most of the people we knew have left, graduated, moved on - so I guess they're fine. Kasey is still nurse here, last time I heard she was pregnant too... Kiki is now the Ministeress of Magic, you might have heard that. Oh, and Talon is now a Professor here, too. Other than that..." Ace shrugged. They had all left. He had never thought they would, thought that they, like him, would be entrapped under the lure of Magic Horizons for the rest of their lives. But he had been wrong.

"I guess this place isn't for everyone," said Ace finally, turning to let his green eyes roam over the swelling crowd of mostly students. It was true. It hadn't been for him, at first. He remembered arriving at Magic Horizons, how he had been disgusted at the House the Sorting Hat had chosen for him... Looking back, Ace wondered how much the Hat had seen into his future as a Hufflepuff. Had it seen this?

With a probably inappropriate half-grin at the ironic memory, Ace turned back to Rose. "What brings you back here, then?" To me.

[Rose]

Rose tried to remember the specific reason. There had never been a specific, shattering moment to tell her to go back. It had, very nearly, been out of convenience. Her money had run out over the summer, so she could no longer go wave over wave by moonlight, pretending to forget who she was. What she was. The past summer had been the most amazing yet. She had also nearly died from malnutrition. Dead bodies on a schooner were too messy a situation to risk. The crew had gotten used to her, arriving a slice of a minute after dusk, asking to be handed a line as they skimmed along the line of the wind. The lines of callouses on her hands were beginning to fade.

She shook her head abruptly, the quiet rage of an ocean at night slipping out of her mind. There are too many secrets, she thought, the face of a crew member, young for his age to be working on such a vessel, slipping last from her mind.

"A series of amazingly coincidental events." She said. Fate, she meant. "Which coincided with each other eerily. I came a few months ago to Diagon Alley for a job opportunity." She searched his eyes, wondering if he'd care that she was lingering just out of his eyesight since early September. "This is the first time I've come this close to the school, though," she added as delicately as she could. Her mind drifting around the edges of the idea of writing to Kasey for dinner some evening, but her mind was floundering already at such a historical re-acquaintance.

[Ace]

Ace no longer tried to avoid her gaze. It was there, being offered to him, and he took it for all it was worth, seeking it out and trying to read between her lines - there were a lot of hidden meanings there, and he wanted to know every one. He saw her hesitation around mentioning her presence here, but it meant nothing to him. In her position, he wouldn't have wanted to come anywhere near the school, near the memories of human life. It was too difficult. He knew.

So why? Instead of keeping quiet - which was probably the better idea - Ace finally voiced a genuine question. "So why come back then? Here, I mean. Hogsmeade." He suddenly realised that he had no right to ask that question, and wanted more than anything not to anger her. It was inevitable, but it could be avoided for the time being.

"You don't have to answer, it's just... I expected you to move on, too. Like the rest. I..." he paused a moment, ".. I honestly never expected to see you again, Rosie."

[Rose]

"I had been sitting in the Leaky Cauldron for almost every night for two months. I think I needed a change." She omitted the comment that the warlock bartender was beginning to make eyes at her. She wasn't sure if Ace would find it amusing. And if it did, Rose didn't want to analyze the meaning of his smile.

She bit her lip a final, severe time, looking down at the patterns she was drawing on the table with her fingertips. Rosie, it just made her sound like she was a young, naive girl again. I'm not a little girl, she told her husband with eyes of anguish. She also felt her stomach knot a warning. Why here? Why not any other place in Diagon Alley? She had to let him know that she wasn't a fanciful little sprite of a girl anymore - that she hadn't expected to see him ever again.

"I wanted to see if it was any different," she whispered, and her own words shocked her. Or was it how much could change and how much could freeze in the course of a scarce few years out of her eternity. The world around her - the sounds, the faces, even the goddamn menu sticking out in the middle of the table had an adapted version of broomsticks on it. But he sat across from her, perfectly preserved. And so was she, besides the fact that her skin was several shades paler and too skinny - though her knit sweater hid her malnutrition well. She met his eyes, her own brimming with apologies, but defiance as well.

"Damnit, Ace." She turned her head away to stare out the window, her eyes itching.

[Ace]

Ace saw the brief spasm of pain that flitted across her gaze at his mention of her pet name. With a shock, he realised she was right - he shouldn't call her that anymore. Even if it weren't for the fact that the painfully rigid vampiress in front of him was as far from Rosie as it was possible to be, he had no right to call her by anything that would tie her to him now. All of it had to go, for her to move on... he understood, and looked away, not letting her see the shame that burned hard in his eyes.

Frozen, was what they were. Forever chained to one moment in time - and where the rest of the humans got their life drained out of them slowly, then given the release of death, the undead beings of the earth were drained without ever having release. Years pass, and your bloom fades...

Funny, how he never mentioned that to her before the wedding. Funny how he never thought of it. Funny how all he saw - and all he would ever be able to see - was his precious little Rosie.

Ace cleared his throat as quietly as possible, trying his hardest to conceal the emotion that threatened to devour him. He stopped the familiar nickname from tumbling out of his mouth, and forced out an unfamiliar one that he had never associated with the Vampiress sat before him. "Rose. Please..."

He stopped again. What could he possibly say. Shaking his head, Ace peered into his drink, seeking answers in its shallow waters. "I'm sorry."

[Rose]

Rose drew in several sharp breaths and drew her gaze away from the window to watch him. She felt ridiculous, her eyes filled with more emotion then the last few years had collectively stirred in her. She took her glass and downed the rest of it abruptly. The taste, seeming almost metallic on her tongue, brought her back to reality so quickly it stung.

"Don't be." She told him, her eyes level across his face. She leaned across the table so her soothing whisper would carry, though she made sure not to brush her fingertips even against a corner of his sleeve. She knew either of them was too close to their breaking point. "This isn't a curse, no matter how much guilt you put on yourself for what happened." She looked across at him imploringly, and felt like he was shrinking. It was an unusual sensation. "I don't have to be a normal Vampire. I don't have to lose my humanity and surrender who I was over to some intangible night creature." Her attempt to calm him even as she was the one who had began to tremble, was so natural she didn't question it.

"You showed me that, you know."