Work Text:
Bill Weasley didn’t have many regrets, but the last conversation he’d ever had with Sasha was one of them.
It had been right after the battle, all the death and destruction still hanging in the air like smoke, and the words she’d lobbed at him had been like knives, designed to cut right to the bone – that it had been his fault. That neither she nor Penny would ever have joined the order if he hadn’t convinced then. That she hated him.
He hadn’t blamed her, though, not even then. It had hurt, of course it had, but Penny’s body had still been lying on the floor of the great hall, all the ghosts of Sasha’s past clinging to her like ash, and Bill had just stood there, telling himself over and over again that she hadn’t truly meant it. She had needed someone to blame, and if she’d picked him – so be it. She’d calm down, eventually, and then he’d still be here, waiting, like he always did for this girl who was his sister in all but name.
Or so he’d thought.
This was also why he hadn’t followed her, why he’d let her go, why he hadn’t gone to her apartment when she hadn’t shown up for Penny’s or Fred’s or any of the others’ funerals, why he hadn’t gone after her even when he’d heard that she’d fled to South America, no matter how much he’d wanted to. She might not have been replying to his letters, but both Diego and Talbott had heard from her, so he’d known she was okay, at least.
“It’ll be fine, mon amour.” Fleur had told him. “She just needs more time, I’m sure.”
A few months later she’d stopped replying to anyone.
Bill had contacted all of their former schoolmates one by one, hoping and praying that someone had heard from her, and had been breathlessly grateful when Merula had volunteered to go to South America to track Sasha down. He’d been itching to go himself, but by then Victoire had been born and he hadn’t possibly been able to leave his family, no matter how worried he’d been. Merula, while famously prickly and very hard to get along with, was a supremely capable witch and more loyal to Sasha than she’d ever admit; he’d had no doubt that she’d do her hardest to find her and bring her back home.
But then, of course, Merula had gone missing too.
Bill didn’t like to think of the months had followed. There’d been increasingly desperate pleas to the Brazilian ministry, half-formed plans for another rescue mission, more meetings with the former circle of Khanna, during which no one had come up with any practical ideas, until, slowly but surely, they’d been forced to admit that one thing seemed more and more likely – that both Sasha and Merula were dead, claimed by some cursed tomb deep within the jungle.
By then, Bill had had plenty of practice with grief, but it still tore him apart. At night he dreamed of their last conversation over and over again, wishing he’d said something different, wishing he’d told her what she meant to him, wishing he’d done a thousand things differently. It seemed so unfair, all of it. Why had Sasha survived so much just to die like this? Why had she never gotten a break, never any lasting happiness? Why hadn’t be able to save her?
And then, over two years after he’d last spoken to Sasha, there was a knock on his door.
It was late, dusk already falling outside, and Fleur was upstairs putting Victoire to bed; Bill heaved himself off the sofa with a groan, padding down the hallway towards the front door. He wasn’t in the mood for guests; hopefully it was just a neighbor or something, come to –
He opened the door, and his breath caught in his throat.
Her spiky hair was windswept, an oversized leather jacket hanging off her tall frame and her customary frown on her face, and Bill had never been so shocked or so absurdly glad to see someone. Was he dreaming? Was this real?
Merula spoke before he found his voice, before he even managed to put a coherent string of words together. “What’s up, Weasley?” she said with a grin. “Cat got your tongue?”
Later, the whole evening would feel strangely dreamlike to Bill.
The story that Merula told him seemed insane, impossible, utterly outlandish – a tomb filled with ancient magic. An uncontrolled tumble through time, nearly a century into the past. The murderous goblin that had waited there, a girl who could control the ancient magic, and then, finally, a way back – one that Sasha, apparently, had chosen not to take. And yet Merula was here, unharmed but with lines on her face that hadn’t been there before, and Bill’s entire world seemed to tip off its axis, a strange, desperate hope bursting into life inside his chest.
He did not sleep that night. Merula stayed until well after midnight, answering his questions with surprising readiness, and he was at the ministry early the next morning, heading straight for the office of records.
It didn’t take too much convincing to get access. The clerk on duty had been in Bill’s year at Hogwarts, a flaxen-haired Ravenclaw girl he’d always been cordial with, and after some hesitation she let him inside the archives, telling him that he had an hour before her supervisor would get there.
Bill’s hands were shaking when he reached for one of the parchment slips used to request files, shaking when he wrote down Sasha’s full name. A stack of documents appeared after only a moment, and he leafed through it hastily, eyes skimming the pages for any new information.
There wasn’t any. All the archives had given him were things that he’d expected – Sasha’s birth certificate, copies of some of her school records, documents about her employment at Gringott’s, the deed to Westbrook manor. Nothing new. Nothing that supported Merula’s story in the slightest.
Bill felt his heart sink, doubt creeping in, but then an idea came to him. Merula had mentioned a man, a professor at Hogwarts who’d apparently been a big part of Sasha’s decision to stay. Sharp, right, that had been his name. It seemed unlikely, but maybe…?
He took a new slip and wrote down another name. Sasha Hecate Sharp.
Still nothing. He tried again. Sasha Hecate Westbrook-Sharp.
For several endless moments, again, nothing happened. And then the documents started appearing.
Bill reached for them, holding his breath. The one at the very top was a marriage certificate, dated July 12th, 1892, documenting the marriage between Aesop Everard Sharp and Sasha Hecate Westbrook-Sharp. The one after that – his heart missed a beat in his chest – was a birth certificate.
Theodore Jacob Sharp, born August 20th, 1893. Sasha was listed as the mother.
Once again, Bill felt like he was dreaming. There was another birth certificate after that – Caroline Rowan Sharp, born June 3rd, 1897 – and two more waiting further down in the stack, both bearing the same date. Hazel Penelope Sharp and Joseph Bennett Sharp, born November 28th, 1900. Four children, and all of them, if those documents were to be believed, Sasha’s.
There was more – a deed to a small house in Hogsmeade, purchased by both Sasha and the man she had apparently married, as well as one in a village somewhere in Scotland, dated a few years later. Records of her employment at Hogwarts, lasting until approximately the birth of her second child, and after that, improbably, of employment at the ministry as an instructor at the auror academy. Some scribbled reports of treatment at St. Mungo’s around the time the twins seemed to have been born.
And then, which he’d been half-expecting but dreading nonetheless – a death certificate.
He had to force himself to look at it, to read the words. According to the document, Sasha had died in 1981, aged 117, of natural causes.
Bill could not name the emotion he felt at this. Grief, yes, but also something else, something less painful, altogether more like joy. Yes, she had died. But from the story these documents told, she had lived first – married, had children, a career, a home.
All those things he knew she’d always wanted. Had they made her happy, he wondered?
An idea came to him them. He wrote down another name, apprehensive, barely daring to breathe. Minutes later, he had an address.
Theodore Sharp, it turned out, lived in Godric’s Hollow.
It took Bill three days to muster up the courage to go.
Fleur had offered to come with him, but he knew that this was something he needed to do on his own, something he felt like he owed Sasha – which didn’t change the fact that when he finally stood in front of the small cottage, raising his hand to knock, he wished for a moment he’d taken her offer. Merlin, what was he doing? How could this possibly be happening?
For several long moments, nothing happened. Bill felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief, already half-sure nobody would open, that he’d go home and wonder why he’d ever done this in the first place, but then, without warning, the door swung open, and Theodore Sharp stood in front of him.
He was old. Bill had known that, of course, rationally at least, but seeing the stooped, wrinkled, white-haired man in front of him made it impossible to think of him as Sasha’s son, as someone who would have grown up with Victoire, had things been different. He opened his mouth, to say what he was not sure, but Theodore beat him to it.
“Ah. You must be Bill then.” he said. “You’re late; Merula came by three days ago. I think she’s already invited for tea at Hazel’s today.”
Bill blinked once, twice. He opened his mouth, closed it again. Theodore laughed – and suddenly, it felt real. Because that laugh, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, the hint of a dimple at the corner of his mouth – that was all Sasha.
“How about you come in?” Theodore said. “We have a lot to talk about, I think.”
Bill finally found his voice. “Yes.” he said. “I think so too.”
They talked for what felt like hours. Theo, who’d told Bill to call him by his nickname, had clearly expected him to come; he had stacks of photo albums ready and waiting, chronicling the entire life Sasha had had, and Bill looked at every single one, drinking it in, marveling at the smallest details. She looked so… happy.
There was Sasha on her wedding day, beaming, looking utterly besotted with the tall, dark-haired and visibly scarred man she was marrying, who looked at her with equal adoration. Sasha with a redheaded woman her own age, both beaming at the camera. Sasha, holding a newborn baby, seeming both happy and exhausted. A family portrait, some years later, both Sasha and her husband holding a baby, a small boy and a toddler in front of them. Sasha, visibly older, proudly grinning at a younger version of Theo in Hogwarts robes. Sasha, wrinkled and grey haired, holding who Theo said was her first grandchild, his sister Caroline’s eldest.
So many memories. So much he hadn’t gotten to see her do.
“She told us so many stories about you.” Theo said at one point, when darkness had already fallen outside. “We didn’t know where she’d really come from when we were younger, of course, but she told us as soon as we were old enough. It was what she always regretted most – that she’d likely never get to see you again. She always hoped one of us would get to, at least, so that we could tell you.”
He paused, looked at Bill with some strange emotion in his eyes. “She was happy.” he said quietly. “And she was sorry, and she loved you, and she wished a lot of things had happened differently. She really wanted you to know that.”
Bill swallowed, hard, his eyes burning with tears. “How did she… how did she die?” he asked hoarsely, the question he’d been wanting to ask all day but had not quite been able to bring himself to.
Theo sighed. “Dad had died the year before, just after his birthday, and I think she… they’d been together so long, I think she just didn’t know how to go on without him anymore.” He paused, then added with a sad smile: “It was peaceful. She just went to sleep and didn’t wake up the next morning.”
Once again, Bill didn’t quite know what he felt at that. Grief, yes, but more than that too. Regret? Relief? Happiness?
He didn’t speak for a long time. When he finally did, he was surprised by the words that left his mouth, but knew at the same time that he meant them, that he’d found some measure of peace. That Sasha, too, had found peace – and that was all he’d ever wanted for her, after all.
“Good.” he said softly. “She deserved that.”