CHAPTER TWO
❝unbreakable❞

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THERE WAS A GIRL, FIFTEEN, STANDING IN THE BACKYARD OF AN ABANDONED HOUSE LOOKING TO THE GROUND. She stood under an umbrella as the rained poured down around her, a gloomy day for what most would consider a gloomy event. She adorned a black dress that she had just received that year with flats on her feet as she looked at the newly shoveled ground.

          It would look suspicious to those who saw her; a young girl with her skin tone alone with a patch of brown dirt amongst the blossoming green grass. As if she was standing over an unmarked grave, covering up a crime that she had just committed. And those who were neighbors would know that the house she stood in the back of had been empty – or what they suspected to be empty – for months, yet now this girl they had seen grow up there wearing black with a blank expression on her face.

          There were no tears brimming in her eyes, no guilt. No compassion for the ground she glared holes into. Just a cold, emotionless look coating her features; a look that she had learned to perfect through the past year. One that she had been honing for years before, if she were being honest.

          The young girl said nothing to the ground she looked down upon, but most would think it weird for her to say anything at all to the ground. It was just dirt and they did not know what lied beneath. Of course, she logically knew that in a few years – probably when a new family came to live in the house – the secret would be uncovered, but at the current moment it was just that; a secret.

          Not a small one, no, small would be trespassing onto property or knowing that Philip Queen fancied Mai Clearwater. Small would be covering up whereabouts of a person one night. This...it was not small, it was large, but she would keep it all the same. A nice secret that she never had to let anyone know.

          Soon, she heard footsteps approached behind her but she said nothing, didn't even turn to look at the figure who went to stand by her. There was silence between the pair and she didn't look to see who it was, knowing already the only person who it could be.

          "Is this where you buried him?" the deep voice of her uncle asked.

          Rosalie nodded at the question, eyes still trained to the ground as she said, "I didn't see the point in wasting money to have him buried in the cemetery."

          "It would be with your mother," her Uncle Kingsley pointed out, though there was nothing in his voice that suggested he thought that the man earned the right to be there and nothing that suggested he would place him there for his eternal resting place.

          "Yes, it would," Rosalie agreed because he spoke the truth even if it was not the right one, "But this is the place he deserves to be buried."

          Kingsley said nothing for a moment and Rosalie made no other comment to ignite a conversation. The two of them knew that she was right; this was where the man deserved to be placed forever, no reconnection with his wife. They had plenty of those at his house. "How long do you suspect he'd been dead?" he asked instead.

          To that, Rosalie could only shrug. "I don't know, a month or so. Really, he had it coming to him," she honestly answered, thinking to the many fights he had when drunk at the bar and the countless bottles of beer he drowned before coming back and yelling at her.

          "Most people would chastise you for speaking about your father that way," Kingsley commented and she gave him a smile.

          Turning to her uncle, she said with a playful tone, "Well most people wouldn't let their brother-in-law be given this treatment. I guess we're both going against the majority."

          "Fair enough," he conceded, not saying anything about her tone of voice when she spoke to him before. They stayed there for a moment more as he looked upon the unmarked grave before sighing, "Come on. Let's go home. We don't want to catch a cold, do we?"

          "I guess not," Rosalie said in response, turning her back to the man she once called dad and walked away with her uncle to a secure location where they Apparated back to his place.

          It was where she had been staying since the beginning of summer when she found the old man dead. Months gone since then and she still stayed with him. It was a nice arrangement. They both weren't big talkers, which was nice, and he didn't try and insert himself in her life. That would be too dangerous considering no one was supposed to know of the mission that Dumbledore had given her.

          He went to work every day and she usually stayed home, enjoying the nice silence and how she didn't have to fear about when he got home. She often had music playing so that it wasn't completely quiet, like 12 Grimmauld Place was last year whenever she went over there for the Order meetings her uncle had to attend.

          There, there was an eeriness in the silence. Complete quiet and then the yelling of Walburga Black hurling slurs at whoever passed her. For Rosalie, it was always the same; comments about the color of her skin, about her passiveness as she just allowed the insults to come her way.

          But she saw no reason to fight back against a portrait, she had nothing to prove, and she knew that if the woman were alive and still in her prime enough to serve You-Know-Who she would love Rosalie. How foolish of her.

          As she flipped the page of a magazine that her uncle had brought home for her, though, a knock was heard at the front door. Rosalie didn't frown in confusion and hesitantly approach. No, she knew who would be on the outside. Or, well, she had guesses of who would be there.

          Going there, she opened the door reveal Bellatrix Lestrange and two of the Malfoys; Narcissa and Draco. She did not invite them inside and they made no attempt to push past her.

          "I thought the meeting was on Friday," she commented, a small bit of coldness seeping through, implying that they had no business to be at her front door.

          Bellatrix threw her a scandalous look for talking to her that way but Rosalie showed no fear. She knew that the mad woman would no harm her while she was in true service to her precious Dark Lord. "How dare you speak to us that way," the woman hissed at her, "We are your superiors."

          Narcissa looked to placate her sister before turning back to Rosalie, who still had a passive look on her face. "We wish to form a vow between you and Draco."

          "An unbreakable one?" Rosalie asked without missing a beat, blunt with them even though the game they played was sneaky. They were snakes; cunning, getting what they want without explicitly stating that. But Rosalie was no snake; she was loud when wanted and blunt, she had no time to waste with games.

          "Yes," Narcissa nodded, confirming her statement with no shock in her eyes about her directness, "To ensure that you and Draco will be able to rely on each other."

          Rosalie raised an eyebrow. "You mean because you don't trust me?" she corrected Narcissa's lie. There was no malice in her tone, she could understand why they were apprehensive about her and she wouldn't do anything that would compromise her position, so she would agree.

          "No –"

          "Of course we don't trust you," Bellatrix hissed, cutting off her sister, "You are filthy Gryffindor who comes from muggles. You may have our Lord fawning over you but I am no so easily fooled."

          Narcissa sent her sister a look, though did nothing to dispute her claim. Rosalie slit her eyes and stared at the mad woman, "I may not have the same genes and upbringing like you, but just because I am different does not mean that I am disloyal. I have pledged my life to him and I am his faithful servant."

          All of it were lies, she knew as she words fell from her lips, but she couldn't allow them to know that. She had to speak the truth for them even if the lies burned holes in her chest for doing such an act. Her father would call it a sin, a crime against God, but she had never believed in the man who lived in the sky to begin with.

          "So will you agree?" Narcissa asked, her voice with a silent plead for Rosalie to accept. It made her heart grow more cold, seeing how caring of a mother she was being and how her own mother had been ripped away from her.

          She wanted to spit in the woman's face, to yell at her just because she was still alive – as evil and rotten as she was – and her own mother was dead, but that was not right. And more than that, she would be killed for such an act against another Death Eater like herself. It would compromise her position and lead to an early death sentence so instead she swallowed her anger and nodded.

          "Of course, I understand such concerns even if I don't agree that they should be there," Rosalie told them all, sharp words more directed at Bellatrix. Moving to open the house up to them, the three walked in through the door.

          Bellatrix eyed the place with distaste and Draco looked uncomfortable just being there. She knew it had to do with the prospect of the Unbreakable Vow more than the house or her presence itself. And she could understand, could see just how much he never wanted this life but yet it was thrust upon him.

          "Alright, take each other's right hand," Narcissa instructed and the two did as told.

          She looked Draco in the eyes and he did the same, revealing to her how much regret he had for bringing this upon her. She projected nothing to him.

          "Rosalie, will you do everything in your power to protect Draco from harm?" Narcissa asked, her wand pointed between them, performing the vow.

          "I will," Rosalie answered simply. It was not a simple statement when one thought about the implications that went along with it, but she knew it had to be done. Anything for the glory of the good side.

          "And will you, Draco, do everything your power to protect Rosalie from harm?" Narcissa asked.

          "I will," Draco responded, eyes still boring into her own.

          A spark of fire ignited between them, forming the bond that would hold them in place. There was no turning back as the spell locked them together. She was stuck in her vow, she would not be able to back out now – not that she had planned to before.

          She had vowed to protect Draco from harm, helping him in their task, and not to turn her back on him. And in return, he did the same for her. They could not back out now, could not turn back the clock and retract their statements; it was honor it or die. And dying meant failure, which Rosalie would not allow.

          She would risk her life, give it, if it meant she would receive her glory and she was sure that this year would be how she achieved it. Any doubts she had before, any backing out she had dreamed of was now gone as she had interlocked hands with Draco Malfoy and vowed forever to protect him if only to save her own life.

          It was, after all, unbreakable.