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Rose paused outside her mum’s home office, turned to walk away again, but then realised that if she was going to do this, it was now or never. It was the last day of the Christmas break, and her mum would be heading into the Ministry before they left for Kings Cross with their dad in the morning.
She took a deep breath and lifted her closed fist to knock on the door.
“It’s alright, come in,” she heard her mum say softly from inside. At least it sounded as though she wasn’t busy and would hopefully be okay with the interruption.
“Mum?” she said, peering around the edge of the door having just cracked it open enough to see her at the large desk, looking cosy in that year’s Weasley sweater that they all still received from Gran.
“It’s alright, Rose. You can come on in,” her mum repeated, sensing Rose’s hesitation.
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, pulling the cuffs of her pyjama shirt sleeves over her hands, tugging at the tiny buttons that fastened them. Her mum clocked the nervous habit and her gaze landed on Rose’s lips which had been bitten raw over the course of the afternoon.
“What is it?” her mum’s eyes swam with concern as she stood to bring Rose with her to sit on the small sofa at the edge of the room, surrounded by overflowing bookshelves.
“Can I,” Rose began before looking down at her lap. Her mum lifted her gaze back up with a finger under her chin to meet warm, brown eyes.
“Love, you can tell me anything, anytime.”
“It’s, it just feels kind of… kind of stupid, you know.”
“I won’t unless you tell me,” her mum smirked kindly at her and tucked some of Rose’s errant curls behind her ear.
“I just wanted to know how... if you would, well… teach me how you do your hair.” Her voice had squeaked higher at the end, betraying her nervousness beneath what would ordinarily be a simple request.
Her mum considered her for a moment, head cocked to one side and Rose had to look down again, away from those kind, all-knowing eyes.
“I can teach you the spells, love,” she said, stroking Rose’s arm, “but I want it to be because you want to.”
Those eyes continued to search for the truth and Rose felt her resolve slipping away. This had been why she hadn’t wanted to ask her mum, but also why, somewhere inside, something had pushed her to seek her mum’s help.
Rose knew she needed to talk about it, she’d been swallowing the other students’ words and carrying them around, heavy in her gut for years. It was exhausting her.
“I just, if I could tame it, calm it down a little, they might have one less thing to focus on and I could be less worried. I don’t want the distraction from my OWLs.”
“Who do you mean by they, Rose? What has been happening at school?”
“Don’t get mad, Mum, please,” she stared intensely into her mum’s eyes, willing her to understand. “Can you be just Mum for a second and not the Minister? Just you and me?”
Her mum pulled her into her side and Rose curled her bare feet up under herself on the sofa. “Just Rose and Mum, I promise, love.”
Rose let out her breath in a deep sigh. She hadn’t even realised that she’d been holding it tensely inside her.
“People don’t like me, which is fine, I know that not everyone will like me, but they don’t just, say nothing. They always point things out.” Rose paused as she felt her mum tense around her.
“Such as?” her mum prompted for her to continue.
“Things that don’t even make sense. Like, a lot of the time, they tease me about liking books and doing well in class and being in the library by myself,” she pressed closer into her mum’s side, the comforting embrace making this easier.
“But then they also say that I’ll never be as smart as you. And they say that I’ll never be as pretty as you or Aunt Ginny. That my curls are too crazy and too red and that my freckles make my face look dirty. And they say that I’ll never get to date one of the Quidditch team like you two did – not that I want to – because I look frightful and I’m too smart. But the wrong smart.”
“Love,” her mum started rubbing circles over her back, “there’s no such thing as the wrong smart. Look at your dad and I, we’re both smart in completely different ways. There’s no way I could create the things he does with your Uncle George and would you really want wizarding Britain in your dad’s hands?”
Rose chuckled in the back of her throat. That certainly would be something to see.
“And your Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny too. He could always see things and react to them in ways I couldn’t, and Ginny, well, you know your Aunt. She has this way of talking anyone around to her way of thinking, of wrapping them around her finger and persuading them to tell her what they know.”
Her mum slid the comforting arm from around her shoulders and shifted so that she was looking at the bookshelf beside them, searching for something, eventually pulling a worn, blue, leather photo album from the bottom shelf.
“There isn’t one type of woman just as there isn’t one type of smart. And you’re not so different from me as those people seem to think.” Rose looked at the photograph that her mum was tapping at in the album. Three children in Gryffindor robes with their arms around each other, smiling. The face of the girl in the middle mostly hidden beneath a mass of bushy, brown curls.
“That’s you,” Rose realised, “and Dad and Uncle Harry!”
“Yup.” Her mum turned the page, pointing out another photo, a close-up of the same bushy-haired girl watching something off camera. “This was one of Gryffindor’s Quidditch matches, third year maybe. Dean or Seamus took it, I think. I don’t have as many freckles as you or Hugo, you get them from your Weasley side, but they’re still there and I always felt I was quite plain, hiding beneath my hair and in books. I know, from the way you carry yourself, love, that you’re not one for hiding.
“My point is, you are who you are, I was who I was, and those girls are who they are. That is all I want you to want to be, Rose. You know what makes you happy, you know what you’re good at, you know what you want.”
“I know, Mum,” she leaned into her side again and felt that comforting arm settle around her shoulders again.
“So, do you still want me to teach you the spells?”
Rose smiled and squeezed her mum tighter. “Maybe just to stop them frizzing so much, or something to tie them back nicely. It’s not my problem if someone else doesn’t like them. People who like me for me are the only ones who matter.”
Rose felt her mum drop a kiss on the top of her head.
“That’s my girl.”