I'm Only Here for You PV Lauren

To be formatted later! @Lauren Vanes, let me know if you want anything changed!

I really, really don't want to be lost out here right now.

What if it's one of her family members that comes out and not Lauren, and they catch me before I'm even in the house?

I mean, I'm sure we'll get caught at some point, because it is her parents' house. But I would much rather be caught inside of the manor, sitting on her bed or playing a game, not wandering around outside.

It was thoughts like those that were filling Rosie's mind as she walked through the grounds, still very very lost. She felt as if all the walking she was doing was in circles, but didn't know for a fact. She thought she recognized a few things, but the entire place was foreign to her.

Rosie was truly, really, and undeniably a Muggle-Born. The idea of living in a manor with a pureblooded family, with a whole lot of money but people that hated her, was not something familiar to Rosalyn. Though, to Lauren, it most certainly was. Rosie herself had zero previous knowledge of the magical world, and no family to help her through any of it. No reputations to uphold or to escape, no siblings that she risked running into at school.

Come to think of it, Rosie had no siblings at all. Lauren, however, had two horrible older ones. Felix and Arianna, one brother and one sister, who were absolutely, positively, the worst. In fact, the two had literally told Rosalyn horrible things about her friend before erasing her memory so she didn't know it was them. That led to a lot of chaos in detention, including a Forbidden Forest trip, multiple injuries, and the largest argument that Rosalyn had ever had in her entire life. It was really bad, and even just thinking about it made her feel sick to her stomach.

Why did I say all of those horrible things? I'm lucky that we made up again…

Anyways, she decided to push all of the thoughts of what had happened on that terrible night out of her head, swallowing the nausea that came with reminding herself of the horrible things that had been said. Though, to be fair, Rosie was not at all in her right mind. She'd had her memories and her mind tampered with, gotten injured by their trek into the forest, and was outrageously upset by what Lauren had said to her first. Though not excuses, at least why she got so angry made a bit of sense.

Hearing a shout at last, she snapped out of her own thoughts. It was distinctly Lauren's voice. Her friend had come to rescue her from her aimless wandering, and to start this party!

Well, was it really a party? I mean, Rosie had been invited over for a sleepover, which could be a party. But the manor was a bit gloomy…but perhaps Lauren's room wouldn't be! She was obsessed with disobeying and defying her parents, which Rosie most definitely understood the reason for, so there would be no surprise if the girl had the most anti-classic room ever.

She doubted she would be allowed to decorate it in that way though, but still. Any room with Lauren in it was immediately better than one without her, so no matter what happened, things would be okay. Just as long as they stuck together.

"Lauren! Oh, it's so good to see you!" Rosie said as her friend came fully into view, despite the fact that school had only ended a bit previously. Eh, any day Rosie had to spend with just her parents and the tension among them was a very long day indeed, so it felt more like an eternity than the few days it had been.

She noticed how Lauren ran up to get closer, arms outstretched. Rosie of course ran herself, not wanting to leave her to do all of the work!

Once they met, she pulled the girl into her arms, surprised by the fact that Lauren had been the one with her arms out. She most definitely was not the sort of person to ask for a hug, but Rosie most definitely was, so she took the opportunity and held on tight. Not tight enough to choke her though, of course!

"I missed you so much! How are you?" Rosie asked, biting back the rest of the questions that she wanted to ask, mostly about her family and if she brought enough stuff and what the plan was and how her summer was going so far, despite them only having spent a little bit away from the school. The rapid-fire questions would be a bit too much, she was sure, so she held herself back, instead just savouring the moment of the embrace.

She listened as Lauren asked some questions of her own, about if Rosie had been lost. The answer was most definitely yes to said question, but she didn't know if she wanted to admit that.

You know what, it'll be fine. She's known me for nearly a year at this point, so she knows how clumsy and…directionally challenged I can be. Also, she has to understand that this place is huge! How am I not supposed to get lost?

"Yeah, I was lost. And thanks for looking for me, sorry I was moving around! This place is just…huge! How do you manage to not get lost every day?" she asked, genuinely curious as to how she could live in a place this large and find her way around.

Maybe if I had a map or something, this would have been a lot easier. Or if someone had answered the front door.

On second thought, the odds of the person opening the door not being Lauren were too big. So nevermind, I'm glad nobody answered!

What would I have even done if someone else had answered the door? Pretend to be a Girl Guide selling biscuits, or a very lost girl? That one would be the most accurate, obviously. But still, I definitely am glad I was not in that situation.

Snapping out of her thoughts again, aware of how weird it would look if she continued with those for even a second more, Rosie tightened the hug for a second before letting go, not wanting it to reach that point of being too awkward.

She'd known people over the years with habits like that, making hugs last uncomfortably long. Family friends especially, they always held on for way too long. There's a huge difference between 'oh, I've missed you, it's been too long' and 'I'm holding on for dear life and not letting go ever'.

Oh no, back in her thoughts again!

"So, are you ready for this? I didn't quite know what to bring, because I didn't know what you had. But, I brought a pillow and blanket and toiletries and stuff. Also a few games, a deck of cards, and some chocolates that I stole from the pantry!" she said, remembering that particular stealth mission.

The chocolate was kept in a bin at the very tippy-top of the pantry. To Rosie and her very short self, getting up there was nearly impossible(which was the point of her mum and dad putting it up there). She had planned on just grabbing some while they were gone at work, like they usually were. But, of course, they chose those few days to take off to be with her to celebrate the summer. Luckily the time they were taking off ended yesterday and today was a weekend, so she wasn't cutting into any of that time with her whole 'sneaking off for the sleepover' thing.

Anyways, the chocolate. She decided to wait for the night, because then her parents would be asleep. It would still be difficult to get down the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen, especially with her mum and dad sleeping in separate rooms because 'your father snores', her mother had said, therefore two rooms with parental authorities she needed to evade.

She had tiptoed as quietly as possible to get through the hallway and past their rooms, barely breathing at all. Then, when she reached the stairs, she walked down the first several with no problem. But that stupid third-to-last step creaked really loudly, so she jumped down from there. Thank goodness for the carpet, or she could've been heard! Then, she dragged a chair out from the kitchen table to stand on, and snatched the chocolates, which she hid in the bag she was slowly sneaking things to take into.

All of that just for some chocolate…

"So yeah! I'm up for whatever you'd like to do, but I do want to get inside eventually. It's pretty hot out here!" she said, wiping a bit of sweat from her brow.

Rosie adjusted the strap of her bag, moving it to her other shoulder, as she wanted her left arm to bear the weight rather than her tired right arm. That reminded her of the long journey it had taken her to get to this very manor, which made her entire body feel rather tired.

What I would give to sit down…

"Could I talk to you real quick, though? It feels like something is...wrong, with my family. Usually things are just pretty normal, but for some reason, it's pretty tense. And my mum and dad are spending less time around each other, and refuse to even be in the same room unless I'm there. They changed rooms! My dad's in the guest room now, and I just...I don't know what's going on, but I want to fix it." she said, unable to catch herself before ranting a bit about what had been resting in the back of her mind since the start of the break.

To be formatted later! @Lauren Vanes, let me know if you want anything changed!

When Rosalyn had asked Lauren about how she was doing, she was hopeful that the answer would be fine, or perhaps that things had changed with her family, and that they were being less horrible to the poor child. But, of course, the answer that she received was nothing of the sort. Instead, Rosie was informed of the most pressing issue at the moment being the voices within the girl's head. The idea was tragic, of her friend being plagued by her own mind, full of traitorous thoughts and ideas, though she was quickly distracted by the word thrown in with the rest of that sentence.

Fucking. Oh, just thinking the world made Rosie's own chest tighten up in a knot of anxiety, for fear of whatever moral judge was resting within her judging the quality of her soul based on the internally repeated word.

Raised in a house that, in comparison to the Vanes family, the girl was rather sheltered. Rosalyn had never heard a curse word, not until she got to Hogwarts, a place full of people with many different sorts of backgrounds and moral compasses related to what words they were willing to say.

Should I say something about it? No, I should just ignore it. Besides, what would I even say? 'Hey, Lauren, don't say curse words because I don't like hearing them'? That's stupid and sounds outrageously pathetic.

Deciding to just simply ignore the foul word, Rosalyn decided to respond to the rest of the sentence.

"I'm so sorry that I couldn't come sooner to be with you! It's so stupid that twelve year olds can't drive. I mean, if even I could manage to get here with no phone and my…well, my general clumsiness and lack of directional abilities, I'm sure that it'd be fine to lower the driving age." she said, getting lost in her own trail of thoughts, before she remembered that there were much bigger things going on than her own thoughts about the law.

Then, Lauren began to describe the manor, and Rosalyn turned to look at it in confusion when she said it wasn't that big. She looked from the manor back to the grounds, searching to see if there was a smaller house on the property that her friend was talking about. Because if they were looking at the same ginormous building, then she and Lauren had very, very different definitions for what was normal.

"FIVE FLOORS? How is that small to you! And it's even got a basement and an attic?" she said, barely able to hold herself back from talking about her own house. After everything that had happened between the two of them, Rosie knew that she may be on a bit of thin ice, and didn't want Lauren to think that she was uncool or that her parents, both Muggles, had made her not worthy of magic or something of the sort.

The majority of students in Hogwarts, the best school that Rosalyn had ever attended in her entire life, were pretty good people. Lots had been kind to her, as she'd gotten lost or needed help, and others had just been rather neutral. There were still lots that Rosie hadn't yet gotten to meet, which was most definitely a goal of hers for the next school year. In fact, she had begun making a list of goals for her second year, since she had figured out enough of the school to avoid getting lost at every turn she took.

Rosie's Foolproof List For School Awesomeness!

~Write friends at some point to make sure everybody's doing good
~Make new friends with the new Firsties
~Change up appearance, keep things fresh
~Figure out a way to get Mum and Dad to stop arguing
~Be overall amazing!

Whoa, sidetracked! Anyways, though a lot of the students at Hogwarts were really cool people, there were definitely some that weren't, and who would look down on her because of her magic not coming from her parents or any other known ancestors. Thank goodness Lauren wasn't one of them, but things could switch up at any moment. Which meant that she needed to be careful about what she said, so she didn't seem lame or anything.

"I mean, yeah, sure, I guess it's not that big." she said, putting her hands behind her back, hoping that it would somehow make her seem more calm and cooler.

Then, Lauren made what Rosie assumed was a joke, and decided not to think much of it. She doubted any of the rooms in this entire house could possibly have small enough of a doorway to break on the way in, especially with how short Rosie unfortunately was. She had a bit of time left to grow, thank goodness, so she'd just have to wait for that. But, in the meantime, she was stuck in the body of a much smaller child, despite her teenage years being right around the corner. A concept that was alien to her, so she decided to just shake off the thought and move back on from her thoughts to the conversation at hand.

"Don't worry, I won't be breaking any doorframes! And yeah, a garden like this is my dream come true. I mean, honestly, the amount of flowers I could plant here! Roses, and Dahlias, and maybe some strawberries too!" she said, already picturing the way she'd lay everything out in the wide expanse of her head. She had a pretty vivid imagination, which meant that she could picture the future-garden ideas in her head.

"I do see that name on the gate!" she said, looking where Lauren pointed to. The gate itself was absolutely enormous, providing a window into the house she was hopefully about to go into.

Lauren mentioned her mother reading a newspaper, which meant they'd have to keep wandering around. Not Rosie's first choice of activities to kick of their sleepover, mainly because the majority of the time it took for her to get places was full of wandering, so she'd gotten more than enough of that for a lifetime.

Without another word, Lauren began to run off, so Rosie obviously followed. Slower than usual with the bag weighing her down, she had to fight extra-hard to keep up with her friend.

"HOLY CRAP WHAT THE HECKLE IS THAT?!?" she screamed, completely caught off guard as some strange-looking creature bit her friend. Taking a step forward immediately to help her, she saw as the creature turned and looked ready to attack her.

"Okay! That's fine, we can go in. Are you okay though? Is that bite venomous? What even was that? Do you need a plaster, because I have some packed!" she said, looking down at the bite. It didn't look too bad, at least at the moment, so she decided to just brush it off from her mind.

"Oh! Alrighty then, knives on the floor! Got it! Any other booby-traps I should be aware of?" she asked, trying to act like the fact that there were knives meant to sabotage her own family members was completely normal, which it may have been for the Vanes family.

After she had been able to share what was going on with her parents to Lauren, the girl did not respond at all in the way that Rosalyn expected her to. Though it did make sense, but after everything in the Forest, Lauren saying that friends could share with each other, she hadn't really expected one of the few things she shared to be met with such…anger?

"My bad, I guess? Do you need to talk about something, because you should just say that if you do. Something is really going on with my parents, and I don't know what it is, I was just trying to share like you said I should. And my house is all the way in York, by the way, where I had to convince my parents to leave to bring me close enough to your house that I could walk all the way here on my own. To be with you. I do hope they're cool as snow, and they may be to each other, because when I get back, I'm probably going to be so grounded I won't see the outside of my room for the rest of the summer, and then probably every summer after that for a very long time." she said, feeling a bit of righteous anger strike her, reminding her of how very done for she was the second she set foot back in that car, if her parents even took the time to come and pick her back up from that blasted store she'd snuck out of. All so she could come and be with her friend, and give her somebody to talk to that wasn't her family.

All because she decided to be kind, right?