The Next Great Adventure

The Next Great Adventure

Molly stood in the cemetery, waiting for the service to end. Unlike so many of these she'd attended in the last several years, this wasn't a funeral for someone who had passed too soon. Great-aunt Muriel had been quite elderly and had done little in the last decade but rewrite her will. Still, she was family and she deserved to have her funeral done up right. They were all here to pay their respects. Molly looked over her family, all of them, and wondered how long they would all be there. How long it would be before the funeral was for one of her family who wasn't ready to go.

Fleur stood quietly beside her Bill, trying to keep her leaning unobtrusive. She was so tired, all the time now, but her mother said that was normal. Great-aunt Muriel had been so kind to her. She'd loaned her that beautiful tiara and Molly had been right; it had looked good with her hair. At the wedding, just three months ago now, she'd examined Fleur carefully, smiling happily at the tiara, and pronounced her "A proper Weasley". Everyone around her had sighed in relief. When she'd asked Bill, Bill had explained that Great-Aunt Muriel had been passing judgment on the latest Weasley women for decades now and that, somehow, she was always right. If she said Fleur was a proper Weasley, no one would ever question Fleur again. He'd laughed, then, and had told her that she'd told his mother that, "Well, you're really a Prewett, but I suppose you'll do as a Weasley."

Ginny stood between Ron and her father, saying, "Good-bye" to Great-Aunt Muriel. She'd loved the older woman. When she was little, she'd sit and listen to the older woman's stories for hours on end. They were always about the women in their family who had done great and heroic things. Once, Ginny had asked her what heroic things she had done. "Oh, I'm not one of the heroic ones," her great-aunt had said. "I pass the stories on to the heroic ones. You, and your mother, will be the ones to be heroic. She'll be a hero in the little ways--showing others how to live in danger and not give in to the darkness. You . . ." Here, the older woman had trailed off and refused to say any more on the subject. What had she seen in Ginny on that long-ago snowy afternoon? The handsome Tom Riddle from the diary? The evil monster he'd become? Dear, sweet Harry Potter? Something else?

Muriel looked out at her family. Such wonderful people, she thought. She'd never had children of her own, but she'd hardly needed them, especially once Arthur had married Molly Prewett and started their brood. Seven children, one wife, and a growing number of people to be brought to the family hearth. Should she stay and help them get through the coming troubles? She shook her head. No, it was time for her to pass on to, now what did that impossible Albus Dumbledore call it? Oh, yes, the next great adventure. She'd always wanted one of those.

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