Chapter Text
Together with their families
CHARLOTTE MWANIA EDMUNDS
&
ALBUS SEVERUS POTTER
Request your presence at their celebration of marriage
June 12th, 2030
The Orchard at the Burrow, Ottery St. Catchpole
5 o’clock in the afternoon
Dinner & dancing to follow
If hosting a wedding for her eldest son had once sent Molly Weasley into a tizzy, hosting a wedding for her exceptionally famous grandson, his muggle fiance, and 200 of their closest family & friends was sending her perilously close to an unqualified mental break.
At least they would be somewhat more prepared if someone decided to take down the ministry during the reception, not especially because the new Minister of Magic will be in attendance, and also, it was her nephew getting married.
Rose Granger-Weasley arrives a week before on paid time off from permanent spell damage cases and infectious disease research, and wishes almost immediately that she was maneuvering a lost wand out of some unfortunate soul’s nether regions instead.
It would have been preferable to the chaos that awaited her at the Burrow.
The building in question had undergone so many magical renovations and extensions over the years that it now resembles a mansion; if a mansion housed a contingent of angry gnomes, a ghoul and his ghoul-wife (thanks to the Scamander’s idea of a housewarming gift), and what seemed like an abnormal number of horribly windy, tangled corridors, most of which had no sensible end or purpose. It is Arthur Weasley that has done most of the modifications, and he has gotten distracted by one thing or another so many times over the construction of the rest of the house that nearly everything in it is functional but absurdly confusing.
The idea is that all of their children and grandchildren would have their own rooms (which they did, though several of them shared) but the problem is finding those rooms in the first place (rather difficult, depending on the mood of the house) and even worse, getting from your room to the right bathroom (not shared by one of your idiot boy cousins) and then back again, in the middle of the night.
And so it is rather unavoidable that the house, plus the Weasley/Granger/Potter contingent, plus a large amount of Charlotte’s muggle relatives and friends, plus Albus’s snitch (which had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before that) flitting about, plus a wedding that needed to go off without a hitch and also without any magical interference, is equating to a level of fervor that Rose hadn’t witnessed since Teddy and Victoire had eloped without telling anyone over the Christmas holidays.
There was also the thing.
But that thing is Rose’s thing, specifically. And she can't tell Albus about it, because Albus is getting married, and she’d been instructed no less than fifty separate times not to bother him. And besides, Albus didn’t really know the half of it. Mortifying, it is. Deeply unsettling.
But it has been eight years since the thing. And Rose has moved on, with loads of other more interesting things to occupy her brain space, and sometimes her bed.
More pressing is a tower of linens that she has been instructed to “take care of”, meaning that she should use magic, but not in view of Charlotte’s parents. Rose nearly crumples under the basket, attempting to navigate Grandad’s Perilous Corridor Surprise without tripping on a loose floorboard.
She makes it to her bedroom, winded with a stitch in her side, and shoulders through the door with a grunt.
“Oh, Godric,” comes a voice from behind the linen mountain, which Rose offloads onto the floor. Nell the black cat, who is stretching on the carpet, streaks under the bed.
Lily is sitting on the opposite bed, next to a similar teetering pile of what looked to be socks and underwear, on the other side of which was perched Roxeanne. On the floor beside the bed, Dominique was flipping through a copy of Witch Weekly.
Rose narrows her eyes at Lily, a look which is somewhat mellowed by the fact that she is still gasping for air. “You know that Lysander’s out in the garden, trying to get all of the gnomes out of the vegetable patches, while you’re up here hiding from Gran.”
“Hiding?” Lily slaps an indignant hand to her chest, “I’m folding socks. And Lysander likes it out there. Says they’re nice little creatures, once you get to know them.”
Rose, who has a scar from a gnome on her hand nearly four inches long, does not believe this in the least. “Please.”
Dom snickers. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”
“It is a nightmare down there,” Rose collapses face-first into her pillow, “Mum’s trying to solve some inter-Defense-management issue and there’s probably two pounds of droppings on the kitchen window from the all the owls, Gran keeps accidentally using magic and having to Finite everything in case Charlotte’s parents walk in, and Dad just caught Hugo smoking a joint with Louis out behind the quidditch shed. And that’s just the last thirty minutes.”
“I don’t know why they couldn’t just stay over the hill,” Dom sighs, “Ottery’s at least a muggle village, and we could get everything done around here with magic. Even Mum and Dad are down there just to “eezcape ze tenzion.”
“The entire family knows Al is a wizard, so I’m not sure what Mum is on about,” Lily says, thoughtfully, “Just give them a friendly heads up.”
“Like, oh, the wedding’s at five, and also, if you see anything floating around, don’t give it a second thought?”
“If anyone pulls out a little stick, just step politely to the side?”
“Don’t feed the little grey monstrosities in the garden?”
“It might sound like a ghoul and his lover moaning in the walls, but it’s just bad plumbing, I promise!”
The girls lapse into giggles, the sounds of both the ghouls and of Gran’s periodic shouting floating up at intervals. The chaos is comforting, in a way. Rose doesn’t know what their family would be without it. She has, in a lot of ways, been raised by the madness. Part of it is her astonishing resemblance to her famous mother, who is not only a celebrated war hero but the newest Minister of Magic, as of eight years ago. Rose’s hair is tinted with red but just as bushy; her freckles and cornflower blue eyes the only indication that she is not Hermione Granger, reincarnated. She is also exceptionally good in school (rubbish at Ancient Runes, though) and regarded as the most well-behaved out of her famous cousins.
These are the things the Weasleys and Potters share; the hair, the name, the constant comparisons to their parents (Quidditch prowess, book smarts, putting toes out of line), the unhinged headlines (Albus Potter: Slytherin Spy?), the constant stream of gossip, and most of all the pressure.
The expectation of greatness seeps into everything; the classroom, out on the pitch, in between classes. Every time Rose moves through the hallways, sits down for a meal or revises in the library; any time any of them do. Parties, significant others, friendships; all of it is a hundred times more difficult when they did not know what would end up splashed across the Prophet or Witch Weekly.
And somehow, eight years ago, she and Albus make it out, followed by Lily and Hugo two years later. Rose enters a healing apprenticeship, earns her placement, and now works reversing permanent (and semi-permanent) spell damage at St. Mungo’s. Albus is a cursebreaker, specializing in historical dwellings. It is at one of these dwellings that he meets a half-Kenyan muggle archeologist named Charlotte, who walks away with his favorite pen (and his heart). She shows him a world outside of Wizarding England; a world where no one recognizes him, or comments on his eyes, or asks him inane questions about his famous father.
Rose, too, settles into a muggle flat in a muggle neighborhood. She loves her local pub and grocer, the local used bookshop that she buys out of all its historical romances. She even has a brief fling with a muggle neighbor, a refreshing (if vaguely disappointing) foray into a relationship where nobody had any expectations of her at all.
Which reminds her of that other thing, or - perhaps, the only other person who had always understood what all of that felt like.
But there’s no use opening up that cauldron of insanity now, is there?
Eight Years Ago, June
“With Mum’s campaign - it’s complicated, all of the press, and - I don’t think-”
The change in his expression is immediate and painful. “Of course. Can’t be seen cozying up to a war criminal, can you?”
“No, I just don’t - it’s the attention for you, too -”
“Albus is coming.”
“I know, but they know he’s your best friend, and-”
“They don’t know about whatever the fuck’s going on here, is that it?”
“Please,” Rose finds herself close to tears all of the sudden, searching his eyes for some softness, and finding only steely, stormy grey. “You know I - care about you. I do. I wouldn’t have - I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“But you aren’t,” He gestures to the door, “Going to be there, are you? Not really. Not - in the way that means anything. It’s easy for you to keep it a secret-”
“That’s not true-”
He scoffs, and the noise is cruel. “Be honest with me for a second, Weasley?” The use of Rose’s surname is a gut punch, a shock to the system. “The real reason that you’re not going - come to think of it, the real reason why what’s going on here won’t go anywhere is that you’re too fucking scared of what your family will think - of what your father will think- of me,” he gestures between them, his face etched with hurt and fury, “Of what they’ll think of this. How their special, perfect daughter shouldn’t be messing around with someone like me, from a family like mine.”
“I never-”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, the tears spilling over.
“Save your breath,” he spits back, running an agitated hand through his hair.
Rose has been rendered effectively mute, unable to form any coherent thought. It is almost unbearably painful to see him standing there, so furious. So devastated. To realize what was happening; to know how it would end, and there wasn’t anything she could do.
Because as much as she hates to admit it, she knew that he was telling the truth. And it disgusts her.
“In a way, it’s a good thing,” He sneers, “That it didn’t mean anything to me, either.” He waves his wand at his trunk and directs it through the open doorway, striding after it. The slam of the door rattles the paneled walls.
And Rose’s heart, so carefully protected, so unbreakable, shatters into a million tiny pieces.
Eight Years Later, June
It is the Monday before the weekend of Albus’s wedding, and already the dinner table has exceeded all available space inside the house.
She catches Albus on the way in from delivering a pile of freshly baked rolls, grabs him by the collar and pulls him behind a conveniently located tree.
“I think Gran is trying to keep us away from you,” Rose hisses, nudging him back into the garden, “It feels like I haven't seen you in years and it’s been three days in this hell hole.”
“I think you’re right,” Albus mutters, reaching up to muss the back of his hair, one eye on his grandmother, “Can’t think what she’s trying to accomplish by making me run down into the village nineteen thousand times a day-”
“Trying to prevent you from seriously considering eloping in one of those hag ridden houses you like so much,” Rose says, darkly, “It’s not too late. You could still kidnap Charlotte and one of mum’s Ministry lackeys.”
“And miss out on Uncle Ron’s Marquee Madness? Not on your life.”
Rose catches his eye with a snort. “You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“The ministry gave Char’s parents the Statute briefing ages ago, you know that,” Albus says, nudging her with a sharp elbow, “Gran’s just trying to make them feel welcome, I reckon.”
“Well, maybe you’d like to come up here and muck out the chicken coop the muggle way one of these days, see how the rest of us are living.”
“I had no idea we were having the ceremony in the chicken coop?”
“You would think, wouldn’t you,” Rose groans as Gran catches sight of the pair of them and begins waving madly from the kitchen door, Lily and Aunt Fleur staggering out behind her under the weight of what looked like three roast chickens and an entire ham.
Rose sits between Lily and Hugo at one end of the table, half listening to her Dad describe the muggle construction of the wedding marquee, half elbowing Hugo when he gets a bit too enthusiastic about the roast potatoes.
Fred has decided to start recounting muggle and wizarding weddings gone awry, to great amusement from the cousins and repeated shushing from the adults further down the table.
“No, no,” Roxanne was saying to her brother, “It was the toilets that started malfunctioning-”
“I don’t think it can be considered a malfunction if they were cursed, Roxie.”
“That was a nasty bit of business,” says Teddy, earnestly, “The bride’s great aunt was trying to use it and it sucked her in. Put a damper on the whole day.”
“Well,I heard that at the Caldwell wedding, someone got piss drunk and conjured up pack of angry canaries-“
“That was your mother, and she wasn’t even piss drunk,” Dad says, leaning towards them and taking a conspiratorial sip of goblin ale, “To alleviate your concerns, Fred, we’ve got enough magic repressors to put the Ministry out of business for a week.”
“Ronald,” comes Mum’s well timed hiss, “I have told you a hundred times not to encourage them-“
“I’m not encouraging them, I’m just relaying a story from our early days-“
“Are you going to tell them why I sent a pack of canaries at your head?”
“Because I,” Dad says, throwing an arm around his wife and planting a kiss on her cheek, “Am an idiot.”
Everyone on their end of the table erupts into a chorus of cheers and clapping, while Hugo mimes retching into his pudding. Rose is watching them with the same feeling she always does; affection and a persistent loneliness.
Dinner is finished and a variety of desserts distributed down the table, which sends everyone into a warm, comfortable, stupor. The chatter dies out, replaced with the wayward hooting of owls and the rustling of the gnomes sneaking back into the garden.
Rose is just finishing a slice of apple pie when Mrs. Edmunds starts on the bench, peers under the table and stands abruptly. She is a formidable woman, tall and imposing, and she skirts the end of the table and leans down to whisper into Rose’s ear. “There’s a little - creature under the table, dear.”
“Oh - oh, no. Is it gray and a bit squashed?”
“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Edmunds says, cheerfully, “They don’t look a thing like the little bearded chaps in red hats, do they?”
Rose claps a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. Most of the dinner guests have either gone inside or wandered out to the orchard to digest their meal, and she is left with only a few of her cousins and helpfully, Lysander. “Oh - erm, I’m so sorry - let me just get Lysander and we’ll take care of it.”
“Odd little things,” Mrs. Edmunds smiles, bemused. Rose nods enthusiastically, sliding down the bench until she bumps into Lysander, who is finishing his treacle tart.
One hand on his collar, she drags him underneath the table. Because he is Lysander, he is somewhat unphased by this until he sees the gnome, hanging from the underside of the table and kicking his little legs, a piece of cake in his mouth.
“Bollocks,” he groans.
“I know,” says Rose, grimacing, “I didn’t know how else to get you under here.”
“I didn’t get to finish my tart,” Lysander says, mournfully. “But I’ll get him down. Can you just move a bit to the left-”
“Yes, if you can get off my foot, for Godric’s sake-”
“Sorry, sorry, I need to get my arm around his ankles-”
Rose shifted in her squat under the table to allow Lysander to put an arm around the hanging gnome and yank him down. As she was moving, the muffled conversation happening above became intelligible over the gnome’s protests and Lysander’s muttered swearing.
“You Know Who is coming on Wednesday. Says he’s bringing his new girlfriend.”
“Voldemort? Or-”
“He Who Must Not Be Named. You know. Rose’s arch nemesis.” That was Lily.
“Are they still going at it, after all this time?”
“I don’t know. I think she sees him at memorials and stuff like that a couple times a year, less than that if Rose can help it.”
“He came down to the house in Nice one month a couple years ago, but she was with that prick Alex.”
Rose sends a silent glare up to Albus. Alex had been a prick, but that wasn’t really the point. He was Australian, worked in distribution for Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes and had never minded Rose cutting 60 hours a week at St. Mungo’s (mainly because he was cheating on her). She ends the relationship without feeling particularly broken up about it, which should have been the first sign something was wrong.
“It’s funny,” Lily muses, “Seventh year I could have sworn they were almost getting along. McGonagall told me they were pretty good heads, considering - you know, all of the hexing.”
“I dunno,” Albus sighs, “It wasn’t like that when we were first years. I don’t remember them fighting until a few years in, and then it was a bloody nightmare.”
“Maybe there’s more to it,” Charlotte says, thoughtfully, “Sometimes people are like that when they’re mad for each other.”
Rose feels her stomach turning over.
“You didn’t see what it was like,” Lily replies, her tone serious, “Completely mental. She really despised him for a bit there. I thought they’d end up killing each other, living in the Heads dormitory like that.”
“Still beyond me why they do that,” Rose can hear Albus getting up, “Let them live up there alone. Anyways, he’s bringing the Harpies keeper-”
“Oh my god. Tolliver?”
“Char knows more about Quidditch than Al does at this point.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard, thanks-”
“Do you think she’d sign my Harpies t-shirt?”
“Well, it is your wedding, so I’d say the odds are in your favor…”
And with that, Lysander bundles the gnome out from under the table, and the conversation dies as the rest of the table clears away.
Rose wonders if anyone will miss her down there, sitting under the table, her stomach in knots. He’s going to be at the Burrow tomorrow. She’d known this, of course, as a deep and fearful inevitability. What she had not known was that he was bringing Caiohme Tolliver, the celebrated (and extremely pretty) keeper of the Holyhead Harpies.
She’s seen them both on the covers of Witch Weekly and on page five of the Prophet at least twice a month for nearly a year now. They are tall and ridiculously good looking; they even play the same sodding position.
They are - or at least, they look - perfect for each other. And Rose, who has seen a few of her own past flings grace those same pages, can't understand why it feels like a betrayal.