Her Single Rose (Remus Lupin)

Ninety-Five

It's been three weeks since the spat between Aries and the boys, leaving the trio stuck in a miserable summer routine following July.

Aries would get up, find her way downstairs, say a sweet good morning to Mr. and Mrs. Potter, eat and then go back to her room to read for the next two hours while Sirius and James would eat their breakfast.

It wasn't lost on James parents that some sort of quarrel occurred, seeing as dinners were quiet and they rarely saw all three together.

At one point she even noticed a hostile glance between her own son and the young girl. Aries herself seemed to be putting up her old walls again, keeping more to herself other than doing the dishes and some cleaning.

This night however, Euphemia couldn't keep quiet much longer. While Aries grabbed the dirty dishes from the table and Euphemia was washing the utensils, she spoke up.

"You know, it's a lot harder to have a good summer when you don't spend time with anyone." Aries paused in the kitchen next to the sink, looking to Euphemia.

"I'm spending time with you, aren't I?" She smiled, but Euphemia knew that smile quite well by now.

The woman shook her head, "I knew James and Sirius were stubborn but this is something else entirely. Meredith, it doesn't take much to see tension in a room that's usually filled with laughter and chaos."

Suddenly Aries felt rather guilty. She had known her actions impacted both James and Sirius, but she hadn't realized their reactions had an impact on everything else.

Aries walked over to the table and sat down putting her head in her hands, "I'm sorry Mia, I really am." Aries heard the sound of plates dropping and the sink water dropping before hearing a chair scraping and the touch of a loving woman.

"Oh, my dear, it's not your fault-"

"That's just it, Mia, it is all my fault. If I had just-"

Euphemia shook her head quickly, "no, don't go there. I don't need to know anything about this spat to know that it is not your fault. Whatever you may or may not, or even wish you had or had not done, no longer holds such value because it is already done.

When James had just started out at Hogwarts, he was doing fantastic in all of his subjects. But after first year, his grades began to plummet and I had thought to myself, if I had just gone over his schoolwork with him while he was home, maybe his grades would be better. Or when he fell off his broomstick the first time, if Fleamont hadn't given him one, he wouldn't have gotten hurt."

Aries looked at Euphemia, "But that wasn't your fault. James had control over all of those things. If he ever paid attention, rather."

"Exactly, because I brought James into this world I thought everything he had done wrong or everything done wrong to him was my fault because I brought him here. But it wasn't me that didn't pay attention during classes, that was James. That was a lot to grasp for me as a first time mother. It's a lot to grasp as an older sister as well."

Aries shook her head knowing where Euphemia was going with it, "But it wasn't about Sirius making this choice, Mia, it was about me making it for him."

Euphemia's expression turned into one of sympathy, "that's one of the hardest things about being an older sister or a mother, making choices for those that don't know they need them to be made.

James doesn't like to use his father's famous inventions for hair, which is rather unfortunate because it's the making of a birds nest." Mias words made Aries giggle.

"Now, Fleamont made a shampoo and conditioner as well with his hair products. Because I am a rather good at making some decisions that would do well for James, I replaced his old hair products with his father's, just with the old labels. That way we both get what we want, his hair is less unruly and James still feels that his hair looks best this way."