Luck
With us, it was bad luck from the start.
We met a year after the death of Cedric. By that point, I was still having constant nightmares about the return of Lord Voldemort, about the petrified look on Harry's face, about the screams of terror that ran like blood in my ears. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing or hearing something close to murder, envisioning lightning strikes of green raining down on everyone I've ever loved.
He wasn't there, but he understood. He understood pain.
He listened as I spoke, broken-English spluttering nonsense as I tried to explain how I felt. He didn't laugh at my false attempts, at my still-there accent. He didn't make fun of me for crying into his arms.
Slowly but surely, he helped me recover. The nightmares… were gone.
I liked to confide in him. He was like a priest in a confession booth except I was not religious. I told him secrets and wishes and ambitions. He didn't think me foolish when I told him how I wanted people to look past my quarter-Veela beauty and see me for me. He smiled in encouragement when he learned of my private tutor lessons, trying to study the English language so that we could have real conversations instead of disjointed ones.
Finally, he proposed, after long kisses during the night, hands touching hands and warm embraces when it was cold; his family did not like me at first, and I knew it was because I was part-Veela. They thought I was too preoccupied with appearances to truly love their son, but I thought that it was them instead. They were too obsessed with my allure to see my real qualities, the ones that mattered.
It all changed when he got attacked. It all stayed the same, too.
I suppose people thought that because he was no longer beautiful, I would no longer love him. How wrong they were; I adored his scars, they were like promises of strength and devotion. I knew then, that he would never give up, never give us up.
Our wedding was the best night of my life.
That is, until the skies started pouring with rainfalls of fury: lives were lost as a family was made.
We lived an idyllic life, as best we could, for a while at least. Until Alastor Moody was killed right in front of my eyes, and his brother died in front of his.
We could console each other, yes, but for a while it was not the same. I still felt inhibited by my looks, and he still felt uneasy because of his problem with the moon. It took time, kisses, whispers in the dark. It took friends and family. It took love.
However, as I look at my three children, with their freckles and blonde hair tinged with obnoxious orange and small but mischievous smiles, I know it's always going to be okay in the end.
With us, it was bad luck from the start. But I could deal with it as long as I had a little good luck like Bill Weasley in my life.