broken angel

"Once upon a time, I fell in love with the wrong person."-Unknown

She is your angel. She is your light. She is your savior. Her cold porcelain hands meet your body at night and she teaches you what it means to have someone care about you. To have someone love you. To love them back.

At the Burrow, she promises you forever, and in retrospect, you really should have known that forever never means forever.

"Molly, I can't do this anymore."

"What? Why?"

"It's wrong. Besides the fact that we're cousins, I feel like I'm tied to you, Molly. You're weighing me down. And I have to be able to fly." Her eyes light up like leaving you behind is the best thing that's ever happened to her, and your angel's fragile feathered wings shatter into those porcelain pieces, slashing your arms and wrists on the way to the floor.

And so she leaves you, bleeding, on the floor of your room, and when Grandma comes to check if everything is alright you can't exactly tell her that you've just broken up with your girlfriend who is incidentally her granddaughter, too.

At night, you dream of her. You mostly have nightmares. Her red hair and her deep brown eyes that make you want to give in to everything she wants, to forget that she doesn't love you anymore.

You tremble when sometimes, out of nowhere, you think she's coming back to tell you she hates you, she's done with you, she doesn't want you any longer. That's what you dread the most, isn't it, dear? Because you're still holding onto the hope that maybe she does still love you, maybe it was just a mistake, but no, Roxanne doesn't make mistakes.

The Burrow is no longer your sanctuary, but your prison. Its shambled walls and its shaky floors remind you of how you used to sneak around at night just so you could be in the same room as her; how you went to the kitchen for ice cream at midnight and planted flowers in the yard so that you could spend more time together.

She haunts you; she lurks in the shadows, so that every time you turn around you see her ghost. She was the one to tame all of your inner demons—now they come back to haunt you, rising from those shadows, rising out of her and taking you over.

Once, you wake up in the middle of the night, your tears falling for no reason, as fragile as her broken wings. You saved the pieces of her wings in your bedside table, and that's where you put your tears when you've finished crying them.

"You're weighing me down, Molly. And I have to be able to fly," she told you. You scream at her every night, most nights until you're blue in the face, and sometimes until the tears are no longer fragile but sharp pieces of anger that rain down on your skin, leaving you with scars.

"I never stopped you!" you yell. "I never hurt you! I never took away your wings, Roxanne! I loved you!"

She doesn't hear you.

Life moves on, eventually. You can't stay in your room forever. You find out from Lucy that Roxanne's been travelling Europe; going from country to country to try to find somewhere she belongs. She's settled in Paris, for the time being. You imagine yourself in Paris with her, buying new feathers for her wings and seeing the Eiffel Tower together.

You'd dine at France's finest, you'd see the city, and you'd be together.

And then you wake up, and life continues as bleakly as before. Some days, you want to forget she ever existed. Some days, you want nothing more than to be with her and to never let her leave without you again. You love her or you hate her; you worship her or you curse her.

You, Molly Weasley, are falling apart bit by bit, and every piece of you that breaks off gets put into the bedside table, shut away with the rest of the fragments of your life.

"Molly," Lucy says one morning, during a visit that has temporarily torn you from your sorrow. "Why have you been at the Burrow all summer? Mum and Dad want you to come home soon."

It is then that you realize: you're waiting for her to find you, aren't you? But she's not the Hufflepuff, dear, she's not coming back. But you're foolishly waiting, staying in the same place so that she'll know where to find you if she comes looking. She'd go right to the place that you fought, or so you think, and so you're clinging to the last disappearing remains of RoxanneRoxanneRoxanne amidst the chaos of your second home.

Why do you think she's going to come back? What makes you think that you're worth anything to her anymore?

The smallest, tiniest part of your brain tells you the truth, but you don't listen.

You think she's coming back, it whispers. You dig the broken pieces of her wings out of the bedside table for the first time in weeks and use them to drive away the voices. They don't feel as heavenly as you thought they would, though. Instead they just feel like pain and abandonment and loss and Roxy yet again.

After they take you home from the hospital-Merlin knows why you were there—you find that her wings have disappeared along with your tears. You don't, you can't, accept that they're gone. You search for them for days, but you can't find them. They've taken your angel from you.

It thunderstorms the night you get home. You're awake at one in the morning, screaming at the wall again, but your doctor said that it's okay now to do that. The thunder masks the pain in your voice. You think that Roxanne would come back if she knew how much you were hurting.

She once told you that it was possible that the stars were already dead and burnt out; that you just couldn't see it yet because it took so long for light to travel. Maybe she really doesn't love you anymore. Maybe it's taken you this long to see that despite all of your waiting, she's never going to come back for you.

You're never going to go to Paris, or be with her again, or do any of the things she promised you that you'd do together. Your life is falling down in porcelain bits, but this time you've lost Roxanne's wings and your angel has truly left you.

When Lucy gives you a letter from Paris, your whole world shifts. She wrote to you. With trembling hands, you open the letter. It's already been opened, of course, they have to check your mail now. Lucy and Grandma and Grandpa are looking at you like any moment you might burst into a million pieces.

But long after the letter has been dropped to the ground, you are sure that they were right to watch you. Who wouldn't want to watch the girl with the broken angel crumble and wither?

RoxanneRoxanneRoxanne, the voice in your head says. RoxanneRoxanneRoxanne my angel.

Dear Molly Weasley;

We regret to inform you that Roxanne Weasley has passed away from terminal brain cancer this morning. She requested that we send you this letter to inform you.

Royal Clinical Institute of Paris

Dear Molly,

My darling Molly, I'm sorry that I had to leave you. I knew. I knew all along that I was dying. And there was nothing to be done for me, dear, so I had to go. I couldn't tell you at the time, I just wasn't brave enough. You were too good for me, you didn't deserve to watch me die and I couldn't put you through that.

I love you, Molly. I wish you all the best and nothing but. Please find someone who makes you happy. You don't deserve anything less.

Love,

Roxanne

RoxanneRoxanneRoxanne.

A/N: Dedicated to the lovely Cassie-our dancing days, for being the Roxanne to my Molly. She will have her companion piece to this fic up very shortly. Bonus: it's got a happier ending.

Thank you to Kelly for being my perfect beta.

Written for Camp Potter: First Aid (Angst), the Fanfiction Wizard Tournament (Next-Gen), the Harry Potter Femmeslash Project (Angst), and the "Colorful Phrases" Competition (blue in the face).

Reviews make my world a lovelier place. Thanks for reading.

Allie