#forgotten plot

It started with a chance meeting in the street. This girl - “Rose” - dying? It was entirely an accident, and entirely the reason why Melinda had picked her and given her that name in the first place. See, she had gone into Diagon Alley to pick up a few things, and there this girl was, dying. Choking on what was undoubtedly some stupid, sugary cavity waiting to happen. She had raised her brows for a moment, questioning her own lack of pity for just a split second before a foreign instinct took over her and she shrouded them both with a quick spell so that passerby’s would walk right past the alley the two were in without noticing a thing.

It started with an idea. So vague, then, Roxanne’s name not even on the horizon yet. But there it was, clear in her head as day: 

Dead people must be a terribly good source for polyjuice potions. 

The polyjuice potion she’d been thinking about for a while, admittedly, but Melinda had trouble coming up with uses for Scarlet’s hair and found using her friend’s identity freaked her out too much each time she did so. But polyjuice had been on her mind since using it at the Selwyn-Marks wedding. Polyjuice allowed you to be someone else for a while; to reveal secrets or play tricks on people. She was angry she hadn’t used it back in school, back with Colin, to confirm her suspicions about him and Roxanne. Then nobody could have denied it. Polyjuice was special. 

And she was good at it. Not just the potion, but the acting. She truly believed she had one of the best poker faces in existence. She could be anyone she needed to be, whether the personality matched the face... or the person itself. 

She didn’t know “Rose.” Not just the real one, but this nameless, soon to be “Rose,” who choked trying to ask her for help while Melinda’s mind went blank, and she started magically snipping pieces of hair off with the knife she had in her boot. 

Magic is nice. Powerful, too. Physical violence is sometimes more appealing, though. 

But no, she didn’t slash her neck just to see all the blood. This wasn’t her mess to create. The girl was already suffocating when Melinda saw her. All she had done was make sure she had a fresh haircut for her funeral. 

It started with a rumor. WWW was looking for new employees. At first, Melinda had simply laughed. Desperate for help, she thought. But then, it was like her brain fit together two pieces of the puzzle.

It started with an interview. Surprisingly easy to get and even easier to ace. She knew Roxanne (or at least, all the facets of Roxanne she remembered from the days they were best friends, and the qualities she’d made up) and so of course she aced the interview. From there on, it was all fun and games: Annoy Roxanne. Spy on the competition. Slowly make her store look like it was losing its control and its customers. Loose hats turned into missing inventory and coins. Escaped insects (which hadn’t even been her - or at least, not her idea) turned into unorganized or damaged product and happy accidents. (She called them happy only because no one ever got seriously hurt, after all. Just some minor scrapes and bruises.)

Of course, Melinda also wasn’t stupid. As her antics upgraded over the coming months, she knew that she neared the end of her probationary period and she was going to be fired any second. The trouble lied in trying to figure out what way she planned on going out. 

It started with losing the world.

Or at least, it had felt like it. Like for a moment, her crown had fallen off of her head in the silence of it all, clanging to the floor with such a sudden violence that the world shook around her. And then it was all so silent again. 

Darius was a solider. A guardian. Darius was brother, and protector, and teacher, and friend. Darius was all she had in the world when Christian was preoccupied with his work, and the days were empty with anyone else but him around. 

She never thought she’d lose him. She’d been too confident, maybe. Or perhaps she’d underestimated Roxanne all along. Melinda always knew she had balls. She just never expected Roxanne to have even bigger ones, let alone that she’d shove them down Melinda’s throat. 

Then again, Roxanne always had been the worst person she’d ever had the misfortune of knowing.

How could she do this? It was a question her mind only whispered once, when she saw Darius, in the hospital bed, looking like he was the younger sibling in some odd twist of fate. He was so hurt and so lost and so confused. He remembered so little he could hardly remember Melinda sometimes. Could you imagine - to look in your family’s eyes, and see them not recognizing you?

She ruins everything, was the simple answer that grew from the anger in her chest, swelling with a hatred that did more than simply light a single flame. 

It started with conviction.

It started with determination to get everything right. She could make no mistakes here - not just because she was almost out of “Rose”’s hair, but also because she couldn’t risk getting caught. 

She’d waited. She’d bide her time. She’d watched for news to travel and suspicion to arise - Darius is in the hopsital? Wonder who got to him. Couldn’t be his biggest enemy, Roxanne Weasley, no. Obviously not. - and rather than smile or agree, she’d just let the roaring fire in her eyes grow, stoked on every whisper. 

She doubted the Aurors were even bothering to question anybody. Let alone perfect little nihilist, Roxanne Weasley.

It ended with a closing shift. Just Rose and the store and the money and the merchandise. It almost seemed to easy, what she’d practiced, night after night ever since Darius wound up in the hospital. The second the last customer left and her coworker was off, leaving her alone to do inventory, she dropped all smiles and facades. She didn’t wear Rose on her face with all of her developed clumsy mean-welling and incessant smiling. Everything just went blank, and she switched into auto-pilot. 

Clicking through the store in her heels, Melinda waved her wand casting spells. Doors locked, lights turned out, and the whole building went silent and soundproof. Then, because it was inventory night and she wanted the street to be emptier anyhow, she went about her rampage, which started so gently at first.

She knocked a product off the shelf. Then some more. And more, and more, blank expression gaining emotion as she begun to kick at displays and throw things around.

She didn’t make it to the center of the store. All of her destruction stayed almost completely directed at the front. And then, because it was getting late and she remembered Roxanne had mentioned something about stopping by to check on her since the last time she’d screwed up closing alone, she stopped. She stopped kicking, stopped throwing, stopped launching herself at displays. 

She turned around, face slowly going blank again as she looked at the entrance to the store. She remembered Roxanne’s curls in her face as they laughed under the sun and ran down the halls. She remembered sneaking out with her in the middle of the night to do the things they were told they shouldn’t. She remembered  the pair copying Roxanne’s homework and staying up too late every night before school talking about so many unnecessary things. 

She remembered Darius in a hospital bed.

It ended with a tremble of her lips as tears rose, and a scream ripping forth from her throat. She felt everything - the loss of Roxanne, the loss of Colin, the loss of everything that created her brother. She felt it all, all at once, and raising her hands in the air with flames roaring all around her ---------------

She let it all go. 

It ended with fire swallowing the doors and displays and even the Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes sign whole. And it ended with Rose being the last one there, seen leaving heading the opposite way of Melinda and Scarlet’s apartment.