This story was written for a dare issued by with the monsters (Ellie). Here you are, love, it's finally finished and I hope it lives up to your expectations...

Part Three

A tale told by an idiot

Looking back now
I only wish I had been kinder
Did I ever know love, did I ever know love?
And could I have been blinder?

I would say that I'm sorry if it would do any good
But to never regret means you have to forget
and I don't think that I could

-Please Speak Well of Me, by The Weepies

Paris, in September.

It is raining. Paris in the rain is much like any other city in the rain: grey. They visit some of the sights anyway, and Rose drifts round the Louvre and the Notre Dame in a dream, snatches of poetry passing through her head, the history and beauty of the places swelling her heart and almost allowing her to forget. She thinks that the boys would have spent a lot less time there without her (she loses them in the Louvre, and eventually finds them waiting for her by the entrance and looking bored) but that is their problem.

Albus lied to her. She is very much a third wheel, but nobody minds too much, so it doesn't matter (not yet, anyway), and she gives them as much space as she can. After all, it makes plenty of sense for the two boys to room together in the hotel, and for Rose to have her own room, and she pretends not to know that their room is a double one not a twin.

She goes for walks without them, leaving them to do whatever they want to do in the privacy of their room. It is still raining, and she gets wet through, but there is something exhilarating about walking in the rain and just not caring about the water that streams down through her hair. She stops on the Pont Notre Dame and leans against the edge of the bridge to watch the brown water swirl beneath her. She thinks that she would enjoy a cigarette right now, except that she has stopped smoking for the sake of the little life inside her, and anyway, she'd probably never get it lit in the rain. The edge of the bridge is pressing against her midriff, where there is a small bulge now; nothing that shows through her coat, but you can see it when she's only in a t-shirt.

"What are you doing here?" the amused voice behind her is unexpected, but being Rose, she does not jump but turns slowly towards Scorpius Malfoy, who is standing there holding an umbrella (to save the blonde hair he's so proud of, she thinks sardonically, aware that her own is plastered to her head) and looking at her, one eyebrow raised elegantly in question. She shrugs.

"I came for a walk. I thought you two were busy."

He leans sideways onto the balustrade beside her, then realises that it is soaking wet and straightens up with an exclamation, brushing off the sleeve of his expensive jacket. Rose's lips twitch upwards and he scowls at her.

"What have you done with Al anyway?" she asks, "You two had a tiff or something? Don't worry, I'm sure you'll kiss and make up..."

He goes red, and she is satisfied. Scorpius Malfoy is too much of a know-it-all, so she enjoys knowing the odd one of his secrets.

"How long have you known?" he asks after a pause, and she has a feeling he's been wanting to ask that for a while. Al doesn't care; it doesn't bother him that she knows, because Al knows her, knows she won't tell anyone. Few people trust Rose, but Albus is one of the few. But then, Al is a Gryffindor, so he trusts people too easily.

"A while," she replies blandly, "How long did you know about me and Alex?"

He tilts his eyebrow at her.

"A while."

"Did Al know?" she hates having to ask, but she wants to know.

"No," he shakes his head. He says no more, but they both know the things that go unsaid. He kept her secret from the one person he keeps nothing from; she kept theirs from everyone, including his cousin. They are even.

"He really liked you," he says quietly. She shakes her head, an infinitesimal movement but he notices. "He did. Does. Probably."

It occurs to her that this is not obviously a good time or place to be having this sort of conversation; the middle of a bridge, in the rain, with people and cars coming and going all around them. But actually, there is no better time or place, because nobody is taking any notice of them, their voices are drowned out by the hubbub all around them, they are speaking in a foreign language, and in the smallest chance of somebody hearing and understanding, it will be a Muggle who does not know them and will never see them again. There are worse places to share secrets than the middle of a crowd.

"Why?" he asks, "Why are you shaking your head? Did he treat you badly...?"

She hesitates. Did he treat her badly? Only at the end...

"No. I treated him badly."

"Oh." He looks at her, and she knows he wants more answers, but she is not sure that she is ready to give him them. She is not really close to him, but if she was, she doesn't think she could even have said as much as she has. And he knows Alex; he is Alex's cousin.

"I never told him," she murmurs in the end, speaking almost to herself, "I never told him anything. Nothing important. I knew he wanted to know, I knew what he wanted me to say, but I didn't, because I didn't care enough, but I never told him that either."

He processes this for a moment.

"You never cared about him?"

She does not look at him; her eyes are fixed ahead, on the next bridge up the river. She does not remember what it is called, and that irritates her.

"I thought I didn't. Or not much. I was just messing around with him. I was messing with his head, and I knew it, and I liked it."

They are facts that have crystalised in her head over the weeks during which she had nothing to do but think. She still does not look at Scorpius, but she thinks he is slightly shocked; perhaps not by the facts themselves, but by the matter-of-fact way in which she admits to them. But she has underestimated him, and he has picked up on the important word in her confession.

"You thought you didn't?"

Her hands grip the rail tightly, and she finally turns towards him.

"Enough," she tells him, quite gently for her, "Back off, Scorpius. It's none of your business."

He isn't happy, but he does as he's told. For the time being.

Venice, in October.

Late Autumn sunlight filters through the mist and lights up the dusky pink and orange terracottas of small streets; the white marble of palaces; the brownish-blue of waterways

"A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls," she murmurs, standing at the edge of a narrow canal. She came out in a cardigan this morning, because the day had looked grey and foggy, but now the sun is up and burning away those mists. Albus, coming up behind her, raises quizzical eyebrows, and she smiles.

"It's Shelley. Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies," she quotes the first part of the lines. He slings an arm round her shoulders, and she doesn't bristle for once.

"You're happier," he comments, and it is not quite a question.

She rolls her eyes.

"D'you want the credit?"

"Nah..." he grins, "I know it was all my doing. Well, ours," he corrects himself, glancing over to where Scorpius is browsing shop windows and pretending not to be concerned about getting his mother the perfect present. She elbows her cousin in the ribs, but doesn't argue. "No need to credit us," he continues, "Just so long as we get named godfathers..." he indicates her gently curved belly.

She raises her eyebrows.

"Well, I can probably manage that. But just so you know, I'm not naming him after the pair of you..."

January is the bleakest month. December was pretty bleak too. He has been avoiding his family and friends ever since he got the sack from Hogwarts – ever since Rose, but he doesn't even dare to think that – so Christmas was a lonely affair.

Somewhere out there, beyond the cramped, overhanging, ancient walls of the city of York, where he has settled, for now at least, beyond the cold grey January horizon, there is a girl with Aeschylus inked on her arms, a girl with his child growing inside her (if he can even believe those words she spoke, which he becomes less and less sure of, and he cannot bring himself to ask anyone). He knows – he knows that what he did, what he said, was unforgivable. But then surely, what she did – to tell him then, like that, in that way – surely that was unforgivable too.

"Life is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury... signifying nothing," he finds himself murmuring, his voice as bleak as the month, as he sits at a desk covered in translations of Ancient Runes, then he drops his head into his hands because that was her game, and he doesn't know anyone else who plays it. He does not move for some time.

January is the bleakest month, but even while the earth is still, to all appearances dead and lifeless, there is new life stirring. The earth does not die, it only sleeps, and the lifeblood still pulses, strong and sure, even when the world is cold and colourless.

New life comes bursting in after the long hours of pain, small but vital, in a few final moments of noise and blood, and through the haze of exhaustion, there is something raw, something strong, and for the first time in her life, Rose has nobody's words but her own as she holds her son.

"Hello, baby," she murmurs, "You just put me through hell, you little bastard, but we're going to be okay, me and you..."

Me and you, me and you, you and me. The two of us, and they'd come a long way together, Rose and Baby, but however much she tries, Rose cannot quite convince herself that Baby is hers and hers alone. His hair is dark, his eyes speedily turn brown, and the tilt of his forehead... that's all Alex.

"What are you going to call him?" her mother (not really ready to be a grandmother quite yet, but making the best of it) asks, "You can't call him Baby forever."

Rose shrugs.

"I don't know. I'll think of something right in the end."

She wants his name to mean something, but when she says that, people have suggestions; things from her favourite plays, her beloved Greek legends, names of her family or of famous war heroes, names that have some relation to her own ("What about Briar? You know, briar roses..." Molly suggests sentimentally. Rose stares at her in disbelief, but before she can say anything rude, Lily cuts in, poker-faced, with "Or Thistle. You know, the Rose and the Thistle. He was presumably conceived in Scotland, so it's quite appropriate," and Molly's suggestion is lost in the general outrage – with which Rose does not join – at the inappropriateness of referencing Baby's conception when naming him). The problem with all the ideas is that Rose wants it to be a name that has a significance only she understands, so nobody else's suggestion is agreeable, and for the moment, he remains as Baby.

It takes several weeks and a visit from Scorpius before she faces the thing that has been growing larger and larger in her mind, and becoming inevitable, unacknowledged, for some time.

"When are you going to write to Alex?" the blonde boy asks, and Rose glares at him, because nobody has dared to bring up the spectre of Baby's father; in fact, in all the months since she saw him, Scorpius is the only person who has mentioned Alex to her at all, and he has now done it twice.

"What makes you think I am?" she asks coldly.

He faces her, his arms folded.

"Well, it's bloody unfair if you don't. That's his child."

"My child."

"And his," Scorpius counters, "Look at him and tell me that's not my cousin's son..."

Rose wraps her arms tightly round the small warm bundle sleeping on her chest, and hides her face in his neck, smelling of baby and milk, which are more or less the same smell.

"Go away, Scorpius," she says in muffled tones, showing weakness that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago. Somehow, since Baby, she is weaker. And Scorpius seems to sense it, because this time he does not do as he is told.

"Seriously, Rose. I don't know what happened between you two, and I'm not telling you you have to get back with him. You're the only person who knows what you want – I think you're probably the only person who's ever known that. But you have to let him see his baby!"

"I don't," she bursts out, and goes on, finishing the sentence before he can misunderstand, before he can argue, "I don't know what I want, Scorpius. I don't know, and when it comes to Alex, I never have. I thought it was nothing, I thought it was a game I was playing, I thought I could play it without getting emotions tangled up in it, I thought... I thought I couldn't get hurt," her voice has dropped to a whisper, "I was wrong."

He says nothing more, but squeezes her shoulder as he leaves, and she thinks that maybe he understands, and that maybe, just maybe, she understands at last herself.

She writes.

Her first letter is a quotation that she thinks says things quite neatly. She scrumples that one up and starts again, in her own words. They aren't as good, and what she ends up with is "Alex. I'm sending a picture. This is Baby. He's got your eyes. And your hair. And I think he's going to have your nose. Well, he kind of looks like you in general. Anyway, this is him. Rose."

It occurs to her that it's the first letter she's ever written to him in her own words.

He writes back. He is better at knowing what to say, but there is nervousness, caution in his tone. He thanks her for sending the picture; hints that he'd like to see more than a picture; hints that he'd like to see her too. He apologises for the thing he did when they parted. He was scared, he says, and he panicked. She knows how much it must cost him to admit that. He finishes with a P.S.

"His name is Baby?"

She explains about the name. Of all people in the world, he will understand.

He does understand, but he thinks she is being ridiculous; he doesn't say so in as many words, but she can read between the lines and screws the letter up crossly, then unscrews it and thinks a bit more.

What sort of name does he like? she asks cautiously. He likes Tobias. Why? No reason; he just likes it. She thinks about it, and agrees with him. Toby Greengrass has a nice ring to it too. He is surprised at this; he assumed that Baby would be a Weasley. She is surprised too, and unsettled because she never thought about it, and now she does think about it, she would like him to be a Weasley. Toby Weasley-Greengrass? No, but Toby Greengrass-Weasley isn't too bad. Tobias then? Tobias it is. And Ronald, for her father.

Tobias Ronald Greengrass-Weasley officially has a name at last, and will be known as Toby.

One day in February, he visits.

Trying hard to hide his utter terror, he turns up at her parents' house, where she is still living, at a time carefully picked by Rose, when her mother is in and her father is out. Hermione greets him politely but stiffly – Rose's parents are aware by now that they do not, and probably never will, know the full story, but the fact remains that he got their daughter pregnant and then vanished. She then retreats, which Alex is not sure that he is entirely grateful for, because not even an angry mother is quite as scary as being along with Rose and their child.

The room is very still. Outside, spring is just beginning; the snowdrops and aconites are out and the air is softer. So is she; he looks at her, and remembers the fifteen-year-old girl he first met, who let nobody past her walls of riddles. She is still the same Rose – more thorns than soft petals – and yet not the same. There is a new look in her eyes, which he does not quite understand, although when she puts his son in his arms, he thinks he is beginning to. He has never held a baby before; he is awkward and Toby stirs and gives a small, dissatisfied squawk at the change of arms. He looks up guiltily.

"I've never done this before..."

"Neither had I until he came along," she points out unsympathetically, "You'll get used to him. Or he'll get used to you, one of the two."

Looking down at the scrunched up little face (he's not entirely sure he knows what she is seeing when she says that the baby looks like him) with its shock of dark hair and tiny fist that waves out of its blanket, he thinks that this is a feeling he could stand getting used to.

She moves closer to him, and his eyes flicker up again, his breath catching in his throat, because she is almost – not quite – close enough to brush against his forearms as he holds their child in front of him, and he can feel the warmth of her, and looking down he can see every freckle, every dark auburn eyelash, every gleam of sun on rust-red hair; he can see the fine sharp line of her lips and the hollow in her throat and those green-blue eyes she lies so well with.

"I'm sorry, Alex," she says quietly, and as usual, he has no idea what she means.

They walk. Through the village, along the street, under the great oak trees at the edge of the graveyard, with their still-bare twigs looking black against the sky, in among the gravestones and out the other side, down the hill, and on. Through life, through literature, through art, weaving in and out of the stories of her travels with Scorpius and Albus and his tales of Ancient Runes in Scandinavia and the Baltic, on into the future, Toby's future, which is a road that could lead anywhere. They skirt the edges of pain and despair and betrayal, and somehow they reach the outskirts of a place he never thought they would. Understanding.

Because perhaps she is beginning to understand, at last, his desperation, his confusion, his inability just to trust without knowing, without speaking or hearing. And he is starting to grasp the reason why she speaks in riddles, see what her walls are made of. They are not there, at understanding – yet. They circle round it, they do not enter. But they are on the right road, and there is time.

York, in July.

It is raining. The little cobbled streets are dark with water and the buskers have given up and retreated, although there is still a dauntless group of tourists in front of the Minster, wearing raincoats and sporting umbrellas.

It doesn't matter, because the rain is outside and they are inside. He sprawls back on his sofa and watches her. She is still beautiful, still distant, still written in some foreign language, although he is beginning to be able to translate her, as he translates his Runes. She visits, he visits, they are always in each other's houses, and nobody else quite believes that they are not in each other's beds. But he looks only, the way he might look at a work of art, a Renaissance painting, his own private Madonna with a child at her breast and the tattooed words of Aeschylus lacing across her arms. Understanding there is, yes. Trust, no.

He tries to talk about it sometimes, but she is as good at talking as ever.

"I'm sorry," he has murmured to her, "You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, I know that," she always returns calmly, "You don't have to say it over and over again, Alex."

"Sometimes, I wonder," he says suddenly now, "What would have happened if I hadn't kissed you that day in the classroom. If the last year had never happened..."

She looks at him again.

"It would still have happened," she points out, "Just differently. Not that differently though. I was already pregnant."

"Don't you ever do that though?" he persists, "Think about the things you could have done differently?"

"No, not really," she says absently, looking down at the baby again, but he is still talking.

"Imagine how we could have changed things. If I'd never come up to the Astronomy Tower that day in Seventh Year, if you hadn't been reading Aeschylus, if I hadn't got the job at Hogwarts, if I hadn't panicked and lied when they caught us..."

He trails off as she looks up with a little bit too much understanding in her eyes.

"I think we may go mad if we think about all that," she murmurs. For once, it is not a book or a play or a poem; it is a film, and they watched that one together, so he ought to know it. He does.

"I shall always think of it." he finishes the quote softly, "Doctor Zhivago. Or the film of it, anyway."

"Well, don't," she tells him, as if his words had not been a quote, and as if it was that simple. She goes on with a note of impatience. "If you start like that, where d'you want to stop? You can't stop, because it's endless and pointless and they're all just stupid possibilities. If they'd never built the Astronomy Tower, if I'd never bought The Libation Bearers, if Aeschylus had never written it, if your grandmother had never left Greece, if my parents had never got their act together and hooked up, if Voldemort had won the war, if the Founders had never founded Hogwarts..." she pauses for the whisper of a moment in her outpouring of random possibilities, then finishes very quietly, "If I'd told you sooner."

And he isn't sure whether she means about being pregnant, or... well, anything else. Because he cannot help but remember those other words she spoke, standing in that classroom and facing the accusing faces.

"We're in love."

But that was a long time ago, and a lot has happened since, and there is no going back to that point in time and the way things were, even if those words had been true.

"We can't change it," he says at last, after a long pause.

"No," she agrees, "And we shouldn't want to."

He isn't sure that he agrees, but she does not want to dwell on it, and the conversation is over. Whether they want to change the past or not, the truth is that they can't, so they might as well accept the present as it is, and the future will find them itself.

The small boy runs through York's Museum Gardens.

It is Autumn, and he is small enough that his gait is still unsteady, as if he could wobble over at any moment, but he shuffles through the leaves, laughing with delight, great golden drifts pushed aside by a pair of scarlet wellies. A close observer would note that he has dark hair, almost black but with a hint of auburn brought out by the late slants of sunshine through the trees, that there is an aristocratic line to his nose and something Mediterranean in his big dark eyes.

A young woman watches him, her hands on her hips and a faraway expression on her face. That close observer might notice that she is really very young, and that although she has succumbed to the chill Autumn air and is wearing a long-sleeved knit, the neckline is low enough to see the edge of some sort of writing on her skin, appearing from under her collar.

There is a man. He appears from the trees beside them, and she swings to meet him, and although she betrays no surprise, it seems that he was not expected.

"Alex. I didn't know you were back in England. How did you find us?"

He answers only the last part.

"Easy enough. Your mum told me where you'd gone."

The small boy turns, sees, yells, sending a pair of pigeons clattering up through the branches in a fright.

"Daddy!"

He barrels over, a sturdy little thing bundled into his coat, and flings himself into the man's arms. Here, at least, is a greeting worth having, but although the young man laughs and wraps his arms around the child and seems delighted, the lack of greeting from anyone else does not seem to bother him. That observer might have thought that the two adults were no more than acquaintances, that perhaps she was the nanny or the au pair girl as she stands beside them, watching their reunion with a slight smile on her face.

Then the child is off again, trundling along the path with his father's hand clutched tightly in his. She follows, still smiling, but it is some time before he is released, the child persuaded to run ahead along the curving path, to see whether there are any squirrels in the bushes down by the fence. Alex turns back; she is still a few feet behind him.

"So..." he speaks quietly, but she hears him, "Have you thought?"

"I never stop thinking," she replies, "People generally don't, until they die..."

He knows that she knows what he means. He waits. She catches up with him and they walk on.

"Things have changed," he remarks.

"Things tend to," she remarks neutrally.

"You told me once," he says slowly, "that you loved me. Or at least, you told other people that you loved me, while I was there."

"So I did."

"Did you regret saying that?" he glances down at her as he speaks. She is looking ahead, keeping an eye on the child, who is now collecting burnished leaves among the undergrowth.

"I never regretted anything," she looks up at him, her face a mask, "I think that's where I went so wrong."

"And now?"

"Now things have changed," she walks away from him a few paces, then stops and looks back, rocking on her heels, "Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know, Except pain."

For a moment, they stand and look at each other, in the shadow of the crumbling pale-stone abbey.

"Aeschylus again?" he asks at last, and she nods, with that quirky smile that is only half sharing the joke and half keeping it for her own private amusement.

"I'd get that one done too, if I had any room left on my arms."

"Well, what is the truth then?" he asks with smallest hint of impatience, or perhaps it's desperation, "What is the way things really are? You asked for time, Rose, and I gave you time. All I want back is an answer..."

She could drag it out, she could dance again, just out of his reach, change the tempo so he can't keep up. It's what she's always done. But the dance is old and her feet feel tired, and perhaps inside her, there are words that have been waiting to come out for a long time.

They will wait a little longer though, so she stretches out a hand instead, a silent answer, and he takes it, fingers touching and twining, a quiet moment caught in time, a moment of understanding, trust and something else, something sweet and strong and (for now) nameless. The moment is broken too soon; there is a toddler to attend to, squirrels to find, a stroll to finish and a world to walk through, but their linked fingers are strong and this time, maybe, they will dance in step.