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winding road
She stands and watches the waves break.
It is autumn and the world is a flurry of leaves and wetness and gray skies. Gone are the eternal star scattered nights of the summer where the air burned with dreams. She is left with the embers of happier days and she watches as they slowly burn into silence.
The waves break and lap, form and fall, push and pull, trapped in their own dance. And she watches, marveling.
Behind her, her family and cousins are dispersed throughout the lakefront laugh and talk and live. Splinters of their words fly to her.
There is something tragic about autumn, she thinks, of being without being loved.
The air is laced with the comfortable sting of yesterday and childhood. Cotton and air mixing, fields ripping, umbrellas held against the sky. She breathes slowly, feeling every alcove of her past greeting her. Worn books, piano keys, saccharine, two Knut candies.
Above her and her laughing cousins, the thunder breaks, spasming, cracking, and the leaves follow in response, falling off their branches and weaving through the cloud tops.
Thunder. Wind. Leaves rustling. The faint murmurs of her family. The melodies of her life.
Then, footsteps on stone.
“Molly?”
She smiles before turning, even though she does not recognize the voice. In a family of stars, incandescent, unwavering, eternally threaded in the skies, she is starlight. “Yes?”
“You’re home? When did you get back?”
“Teddy Lupin?”
Teddy’s eyebrows rise. “Were you expecting someone else?”
He looks older, she notices. Not taller or bigger.
“No, no,” she adds hastily. “It’s not that. I got back three days ago.”
“Oh.”
Silence descends upon them, painted in by time and distance and a hundred other little things she cannot be bothered to remember. A strand of hair falls into her eyes.
“How’ve you been, Teddy?”
“Alright, I suppose. Finally got a job and a flat.” He runs a hand through his cleanly cut hair and Molly’s eyes waver, falling instead to the scene behind him. Dominique sits reading quietly, unaware of the wind hassling her, and Lucy stands in the distance, splashing water onto Louis’s face and Molly marvels at how much things have changed, at how much their lives have moved on without her.
“And you? How’d your music career work out?”
“I’m back, aren’t I? What does that tell you?” Her voice is quiet, twisting, turning as her own life has.
“S – sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. How’s everyone else? How’re you and Victoire?”
He grimaces.
“What?” Molly laughs. “Oh come on! I thought you two were all for getting married. Right before I left – remember what you said – and what Lily – “
“Merlin, Molly!” Teddy reddens considerably, his features wilting downwards. He checks behind his shoulder, inspecting the general vicinity. “We agreed not to discuss that again!”
“You honestly expected me to listen to you?!” She smiles at how easily, even after all these years, they’ve slipped into conversation, like boats swaying and children playing. So many things have changed, and yet, she still stands before Teddy Lupin, laughing as she did when she was five or fifteen. She adopts a deep voice. “Oh Molly - I think I
love – “
“
Molly!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop.”
“Thank God.”
A new wind breaks and washes over them, showering leaves and dust and old memories into their face. And Molly smiles, watching the leaves reach their crescendo, twirl, swirl.
“I’ll be going, then. Take care, Molly.”
“I will.”
“Be nice to your parents. And your sister. They’ve missed you.”
She suppresses a frown. “I know.”
As he turns to leave, she feels a small part of her lifting, walking with him.
“You’ve grown up, Teddy.” She says it quietly, but the winds tame, and he hears. And suddenly, she feels so very grown up. A small sadness seems to seep through her lips, through her words, to him, to the air between them and the leaves and trees around. Yesterday, she was Molly and he was Teddy and they were children. Today, she stands in front of him like a stranger, echoing words so many forgotten relatives have given to her. A vast whiteness seems to stand between them, rolling and rolling.
But, he is not a stranger.
He is Teddy Lupin, after all.
Her friend.
He pauses before he continues. “Thanks.” He rounds the corner and disappears among the thicket of trees bordering the lakeside.
The voices of her sister and mother float down to her.
“
Lucy Weasley!”
“I was kidding! Honestly, ask Lou – “
“Like I’m going to help you!”
Teddy Lupin had grown up. Molly took a deep breath.
Now it was her turn to.
A/N: For Jane, Rachelle, and everyone who ships Teddy/Molly. Please don’t forget to review!
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