Chapter Text
Very quickly, Lily and James Potter discovered a certain fact about their darling new daughter.
Rosalie Liliana Potter was different from other babies her age.
Even from her own twin. Whilst Charlus cried for attention, slept deeply, and would not settle unless held—traits the new parents had observed in most every other newborn in St. Mungos, little as there were in these dark times—little Rosalie was… quieter, one would say.
She awoke at the slightest jostle, and yet she would barely cry, content in simply staring at you with those sharp, clear emerald eyes inherited from her mother, wanting nothing, just silently observing.
Though worried still, they trusted both in the nurses of the ward and in their promises that their Rosa was a perfectly healthy baby, despite all her peculiarities. And though they truly loved her just as much as they did her twin, Lily and James unwittingly found themselves more and more grateful for her independence with every sleepless night they endured with Charlie’s cries.
With their new treasures held close, the two lovers quietly fled the hospital under the cover of night, making their way swiftly to Godric’s Hollow with haste and undaring to relax until both they and their babies were safe and hidden under the roof of their humble little cottage.
(They were supposed to be safe.)
The couple held no illusions about the risk of their role in the War. They knew that at any time, they could fall under a curse or another, and never come back up again. This was a truth they’d long been forced to confront, and there was nothing they could do except trust in each other, as they’d always done, and hope for the very best.
What was previously a reluctantly accepted solution, was now a completely un acceptable one, now that they had precious, darling treasures—and potential targets for the Dark Lord at that—they most certainly could, and would, not orphan them, no matter how selfish it seemed.
The safe option would be to withdraw from the Order, or at least the physical, front-line battles. The safe option would be to huddle together, a family of four, in the cottage where it was impenetrable beyond doubt. The safe option, well—anybody who knew the Potters would recognise it as one they wouldn’t take.
So Lily and James—along with Frank and Alice, whose new son also seemed to fit the terms of the prophecy—worked out a new system.
Every day, they would switch roles. Every day, whilst one went on missions with the rest of the Order, the other remained at the cottage, looking after the two toddlers as best they could. This way, even if the worst came to pass and a mission went wrong, the twins would at the very least have one parent still with them.
Because never, never in a million years, could they imagine anything happening to them from within the cottage. Within the cottage, which held wards laid there by Albus Dumbledore himself, and most importantly—under the Fidelius Charm, of which the title of Secret Keeper was entrusted to only the very closest of friends.
And indeed, this system worked perfectly for over a year. It was unanimously decided that, no matter what some prophecy said, the babies involved would stay where it was safe until the War inevitably passed, one way or another.
The twins grew up fast and healthy, Rosalie remaining quiet and demure while Charlus grew to become louder, smiling wider. Their first birthday passed with much fanfare and a big celebration—courtesy of Moony and Padfoot, who would both deny the sheer possibility of being ‘over-excited’ for such a momentous occasion—even if it was just for them and their inner circle of friends. The two learnt their first words—that being ‘Mama’ for both of them, despite James’ pouting and the Marauders’ urging—with Rosa accomplishing the milestone a few months before Charlie.
All in all, despite the War brewing right outside their doorstep, and despite Voldemort’s steady climb in power, things were… good, in the Potter family.
But all good things come to an end.
One decision, one change and one traitor was all it took for the Dark Lord to finally find them, to finally find two of the potential candidates of the prophecy he’d been so relentlessly seeking to nip in the bud.
It’d been Lily’s turn to stay at the cottage that day, and though she was a master at both charms and potions and a brilliant witch at that, she did not stand a chance next to the most infamous, most powerful dark wizard of her age. Regardless, when the wards started creaking, when her neck snapped up in horror from where she was cooing to the cribs... she pulled out her wand.
(“No- No- Not my babies, please-”)
A sign of defiance as obvious as this would not have normally gone unpunished by the Lord—and perhaps it was only Lord Voldemort’s favouritism of his Potion’s Master which allowed her to live—but live she did, cast aside by nothing but a strong, dismissive stunner to keep her from intruding as the dark wizard crept closer to the two cots, red, glinting eyes flitting from one to the other.
“Ah… but which one of you is the one?” He hissed, long white fingers silently clutching the edges of the cot, looking between the two toddlers, one which had been awake ever since his entrance and the other beginning to stir.
The Lord was no fool. He knew that magic was fickle and that one could never be too careful, and so he examined them both thoroughly—but greedily nonetheless, with the knowledge that the riddance of the One equating his eternal reign spurring him on—searching for anything that would make one better, more powerful, than the other.
The two were truly quite… different, for twins, the Lord mused with a cruel curl of his lips as the boy began to cry, now fully woken up.
Oh, there were ways in which they were similar, of course. His flint-sharp eyes noticed the similar facial features, the similar face shape, the similar eye shape…
And yet the differences far outweighed the similarities. They both had brown hair, but the boy’s was lighter and in a scruffy nest atop his head, whereas the girl’s sported a darker—almost black—hue, wavy and tamer in comparison to her brother’s. He had honey tinted skin, she had pale, pink skin. He had brown eyes and she had eyes that were instead so very green, positively glowing with power.
Almost as if he was looking death in the eye, Voldermort breathed out, moving closer to the girl just to catch those impossibly unnatural shades of green once more. With hardly a thought, he flicked his wrist and the worthless boy fell silent, a bubble around his head at last cutting off his constant, incessant wailing.
Like a predator who’d found his next meal, the Dark Lord grinned, bony fingers sliding onto the girl’s delicate cheek and cupping it with more gentleness than expected from somebody like him. “Yes, you are the one…” His nails—claws—began digging into the soft unblemished skin, enough to draw a bit of blood, and yet the girl just scrunched up her nose and shuffled backwards in her cot, eyes not leaving his and still refusing to even cry.
“Mm…” Lord Voldemort’s amused gaze scraped across her features one last time, “A brave one, too. My, how truly sorry I am... to see magical blood as potent as yours spilt… Were it another…” He sighed ruefully, bringing his fingers to his lips, peering curiously at the little drops of blood caught on the tips before bringing it to his tongue and licking it off slowly, savouring the tingling of magic from even just the one drop.
If only there was a way to harvest all this power!
For a moment, he ruminated on the notion of stealing the girl for himself, raising her with the right beliefs, raising her with loyalty only to himself. With a girl so powerful on his side... nobody would dare raise a hand.
But the prophecy—he had to be sure.
“No matter then, silly girl,” He sighed a laugh then, the sound high, cruel, mocking, despite the lost opportunity.
He paid no attention to the other twin, who seemed to be resorting to banging his head soundlessly against the head of his crib in a bid for acknowledgement. Because in a just few seconds time, when he finally became the unconquered Lord of Magical Britain, Lord Voldermort could take care of him. His faithful Bella would doubtless deal with the Longbottom boy, just in case, and then—then—there would be no possible obstacles left in the way.
“I shall make this quick for you, little one.” He spoke barely above a whisper, grin unwittingly widening as his wand rose in a familiar motion, but still the girl stared at her coming demise without retreat nor tear.
Admirable.
“AVADA KEDAVRA-”
The green bolt sped in the direction of Rosalie Liliana Potter, and suddenly she glowed, hand coming up instinctively in front of her. She watched as it somehow slowed to a stop, just before contact with her palm, time seemingly crawling to a halt for Voldermort just as—moments later—that curse abruptly rebounded in his direction and detonated, green, greedy flames quickly climbing the floors, the walls, the curtains and engulfing all it came into contact with.
And just like that, the Dark Lord was no more.
—~—
When James Potter and Sirius Black rushed in not ten minutes later, they found the centre of the room completely missing , half the roof caved in, little Rosa’s cot in a pile of ashes, the other cot tipped on its side, Lily—mercifully still breathing—unconscious at one side of the room, and all that was left of the assaulter was the black scorch mark in the shape of a lightning bolt—the wand movement of the killing curse-
(“No, no nonono, where are they? Sirius get- get Lily- where are my babies? Where are my babies-!”)
A high pitched wail had suddenly assaulted the air, and they immediately hastened to the baby—Charlus Potter—miraculously unharmed and thrown to the side along with his crib, clutching a bleeding slash on his forehead.
And later, after a year of no Voldemort sightings, after a year of more and more Death Eaters turning themselves in, it would be determined that Voldemort had ruthlessly killed Rosa first, and then had tried to do the same to her brother, only for the curse to rebound and hit him instead.
Later, Charlus James Potter would be hailed as the Boy-Who-Lived, and their precious Rosalie Liliana Potter... would be declared dead.
(”Where’s Rosa? Where’s my Rosa- Sirius, please it’s- it’s not working-“
”Too much magic saturating the air, no signature tracker will work for a few weeks at least- I- James, I don’t- Prongs come on, we’ll have to move all this manually, and we will, but Lily and Charlie are alive right now, and they need help! They need help and they need you.”
”Charlie… Charlie’s alive- Charlie’s okay. He’s- how?”
”I don’t know, mate. Dumbledore will have a look at him-“
”But if- If Charlie’s alive then Rosa has to be too, right? She- She has t-to be…”
”…Prongs… I don’t know how Charlie survived, but Rosa… her crib is gone, it- it reeks of the Avada Kedavra…”
”No…”
”Look at Charlie, James, look at Lily. They. Are. Alive. After an encounter with Voldemort himself—they’re still alive. I’m praying Rosa—our Prongslette—I’m praying she’s alive too, but…”
”He might have her- He isn’t here and Rosa i-isn’t either- He’s got her- He’s got my baby girl!”
”I…Nobody knows what happened, okay? But if Rosa’s alive and in his clutches, come high or hell water we will get her back.”)
And in their despairing, desperate, yet hopeful haste to deliver the still bleeding—but still alive—mother and son to St. Mungos, the pair did not check under the collapsed roof. Not before their neighbour did, at least, running over at the beckoning of an infant’s soft cry.
If they had, however, they would have seen an unconscious one year old surrounded by a bubble of accidental magic, rare tears beading at the corners of emerald eyes squeezed tightly shut.
—~—
"Hello?"
"Who- Oh, what can I help you with, Madam?"
"I found... This girl, she's not mine. I heard her crying, my neighbours, their house was set all on fire, you see, I didn't see anybody there. I waited a bit for them, they weren't coming, I don't think. I want to—really—I want to keep her, but I can barely afford to put a plate on the table for myself, much less for a babe too- I didn't know where to go, I got on a bus, yours is the only orphanage in London I recognized, do you think you could-
"Of course, Madam, you did the right thing. Please, come in, come in."
"Thank you, I just- I couldn't just leave her there- Really, I waited for my neighbours, I did-"
"I understand completely, don't worry. She's very lucky to have survived a- a flaming building! Does she have a name, by chance?"
"Yes! Yes, it was- it... It was... Something to do with her mother... oh, oh what are their names again? Oh, a flower, or a tree or- I'm so sorry, I don't know why my memory's just slipping from me—must be the old age... Tulip! No, no... Lilac? R... R... Started with r..."
"Rose?"
"Rose... Oh, Rose! Yes- That- That must've been it! I don't know why I can remember everything but them... come to think of it, I don't think I even remember how my neighbours look like... How silly of me...!"
"Madam? Are you alright?"
"Oh yes, yes, perfectly fine, dear. Been a long day, is all. I must be going now, please look after... Rose... Rose, was it? No... wait... Oh, you silly goose, course she's called Rose! Don't mind me, dear, just talking to myself! You just look after all those kids and little Rose too, alright?"
"Rose will find a home here, I'm sure of it. Are... you sure you don't want me to call a cab, madam? It'd be no trouble at all."
"No, no... Just look after her!"