Freckles

Freckles

She told you once that she had a weakness for redheads, but as she'd been carrying on an obvious flirtation with your brother at the time, this didn't register as anything more than a half-rueful explanation for her current behavior. You never dared think she meant anything more by it.

There were moments last year as she helped you study for your O.W.L.s, pulling her chair close, resting a hand on your shoulder perhaps a moment longer than absolutely necessary, that made you think, "Maybe...." But you were afraid to lift your eyes to meet hers, scared of what you would or wouldn't see in that forthright gaze over dusty tomes of History and Transfiguration. When she leaned in and her hair fell over your arm, her shoulder pressed against yours, you shivered. Her voice was close to your ear as she asked if you were cold. You hesitated, whispered, "Yes," and hated yourself. The next time, she brought you a sweater.

You've never told anyone, but old books make you nervous now. The aged texts that are her passion make you think of darkness and pain and fragmented memories sketched in chicken blood. Her presence was a comfort in the dim corner of the library where you held your personal study sessions. Somehow just knowing she believed in you made your powers of retention that much greater, and banished the shattering reminiscences just that much further.

Still, several months ago when you discovered the boy you'd persisted in loving for years was dating a Ravenclaw prefect, you locked yourself into your dormitory and cried like the child you still are on some days. Your dorm mates kept a discreet distance. But she refused to leave you alone, settling down next to you and holding you close, stroking your hair as you sobbed late into the night. In the morning your eyes were dry and your voice steady as you calmly thanked her for putting up with your foolish self-indulgence. She shook her head and traced a finger along the bridge of your nose, as if trying to read your freckles like Braille, and said only, "I understand."

After she left, you looked into the mirror at your reddened, sleepless eyes and tear-streaked face, the skin pale and blotchy with freckles. Sometimes you hate being red-haired and freckled. You hate how you burn in the summer when you forget to apply a sunblock charm. You hate how your hair clashes with Gryffindor red. And you hate that it brands you. Everyone thinks that because they know your family, they know you; one Weasley is the same as any other. As the only daughter, you don't get called the wrong name, like your older brothers often do. But you fear your last name speaks louder to people than your voice does. You're The Sister. Even the Boy Who Lived never really moved beyond that perception.

You've tried so hard to stand out, to distinguish yourself, to do things no one in your family has ever accomplished. You're at the top of your class in Potions, and have been for the last several years. Snape has hated you for it, but respects you all the same. The talent comes naturally to you--all those years of helping your mum with cooking, most likely. It's a similar art, just more potent. You like the logic of it, the precision, the way you can lose yourself in intense concentration. It's a means of minute control, and you like that too. So much has been beyond your control.

After the Ravenclaw incident, you very consciously and very stubbornly decided to give up mooning over boys. Eventually you realized you didn't have to work quite so hard at it. And when a certain bespectacled Seeker came to seek your company as his date for the Yule Ball, you surprised even yourself by turning him down. But what's more, you don't regret it.

When did you realize hero-worship isn't love, self-sacrifice isn't passion? When did you discover you needed something other than what you'd wished for?

You had company that night, when you thought you'd be the only upper-year student to stay away from the Ball. She was supposed to be your brother's date--after three years of reluctant awareness, then veiled flirting, then escalating innuendo, he'd finally asked--but they had a big falling-out the night before the dance, and she refused to go with him. You later heard he spent the night in shameful, drunken fumblings with a Slytherin. But she spent the evening with you.

You each put on your dress robes and minced about the seventh-year girls' dorm, playfully mocking both friends and enemies. At one point you laughed so hard you collapsed into her, and she grabbed on and twirled you about, the both of you shrieking with laughter until you stumbled onto her bed and she fell next to you. She looked up at you, her eyes still dancing with mirth, and you realized you'd never truly noticed how warm her eyes are, how flattering her tumbled hair, how elegant the line of her nose, her lips. And when warm fingertips touched your jaw and soft lips pressed against yours, you trembled, and definitely not from cold.

Later, you curled together on the couch in front of the fire, your head on her shoulder, her lips against your hair. This is magic, you thought. Forget wands and spells, dusty books and legacies of Dark or Light--this is the real power that guides the planets in orbit, that fires the stars.

It's all so much simpler than you'd imagined.

It's been two months now, and still you feel surprise and a sense of wonder every time her arms encircle you, her body presses against yours. Like an old, well-loved spell, she touches a soft fingertip to the freckles scattered like gold dust across your nose, traces the patterns and constellations of your body. She is no Diviner, but her heart can read the star charts of your skin, and the omens, indeed, are good.