Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or its related works.
Author's note: so this is... purposfully vague in terms of characters, but I did have very specific characters in mind when writing it.
Run away with me, he whispers and she looks at his face and can't remember all the reasons why it's a bad idea, can't remember why she shouldn't, why she needs to stay and do what is expected of her. And she knows all too clearly why she wants to go. Somewhere in the back of her mind she's aware that the list of reasons against this is so much longer than its counterpoint, but numerous as they are these reasons pale in the face of him. She raises her hands and brushes her fingers over his cheeks. There are unshed tears shining in his eyes. Something in her breaks at the sight. She nods her head, yes.
[In another world, she will tell him no.]
In this world, they take each other by the hand and grab their sparse belongings and they run. They leave the school they spent the last seven years in without a single backwards glance. No one stops them in the hallways and they don't see anyone there, but they're a bit heedless, a bit drunk on their sudden newfound freedom, on the endless possibilities that lay themselves before them. And if someone does see them stumble for the front gates, so wildly, obviously in love that is their secret to keep. (But really, Filius Flitwick had always been exceedingly fond of him and Septima Vector had seen her chafe under the world's expectations, so who are they to judge? Who are they to stop love?)
[In another world, Flitwick will mourn the loss of the light in his brightest student's eyes even as the boy goes on to do great things, good things, while Vector will watch her crumble from afar.]
They make it to Gringotts and she empties the contents of her trust vault before her parents can find out about what she did, what she is doing even now. There's a delirious kind of happiness to her features that are normally schooled into careful indifference. All her masks are slipping, but she doesn't care, doesn't have to care, not anymore and especially not when she's looking at him. They pick up a ring for him and cancel the charm on the one she wears, because the world can know now and they want it to.
[In another world, the world will never know and the ring on her finger will remain concealed all her life.]
They get married in a small chapel deep in the heart of Wales. No one is there but them and the priest and his wife. She is wearing a borrowed dress as she carries a handful of hastily picked wildflowers down the aisle, and the tie around his neck is still blue and bronze, the suit he wears crumpled and just slightly too large as he stands in wait, but it's perfect because they're marrying each other. They whisper the vows to one another just as the sun crests the hills and baths the chapel in a myriad of colors as its light filters through the stained glass windows. It's the first light of a new day and in it they share their first kiss as a married couple. It is the first kiss of many, the first of a new life.
[In another world, she'll get married in a magnificent gown of white silk with a glistening tiara in her hair and the most expensive flowers money can buy in her hands and she'll barely hold back the tears.]
She has nothing to her name now, she thinks some time later as she sits on the window seat of a small flat somewhere in London. No money, no titles, no power. None of the things she grew up with, none of the things she had always thought would be her companions through life. She had grown up not expecting to work for a living and now that she will have to, she finds herself at a loss. Perhaps, she thinks, she could become a seamstress. It won't be much, especially not at first, but it'll be enough. Because, she thinks as her husband enters the room and greets her with a smile and a kiss, she might not have money or titles or power to her name, but she does have love. And that makes all the difference.
[In another world, she will have money and titles and power at her beck and call, but she won't have him, won't have love. And it won't make for a happy life.]
A year after she runs away, her cousin graduates. She is there at his graduation party, her hand linked with her husband's and her sister at her side and her cousin laughs and tells her welcome. Welcome to the land of the runaways. We make our own families here. A month later, she is reminded (sharp and stabbing and painful) of what she left behind. Her other cousin (the younger one, the gentler one, the only one left now that she followed her sister and his brother into exile while her eldest sister devotes her time to a man crazed) stands before her door, terrified of what the family expects of him. When he begs of her a way out, a way to safety, an option, just an option in this choice-less world, she has not the heart to refuse him. She never did. She's not in the order herself, not then, but she knows enough people who are so she takes her cousin to Dumbledore and by the end of the night both of them are induced into the resistance. She wonders what she will do if she ever meets her sister in battle.
[In another world, she will not see battle for a long time. She will be a death eater's wife and her cousin will not beg her for help, instead he will die cold and desperate and alone.]
The next year passes slowly and incredibly fast at the same time. Another follows in its wake. She gets pregnant. And then, in June, she bears a son. He's so fragile and so small and he's the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. Her husband sits with her on the bed and they don't have to say anything at all as they share this moment of happiness that would be denied to them in another world. They name the boy after her younger cousin, the one that's saving them all, the one that will save all three of their lives once more before the war is out. They name him Draco Regulus.
[This is the same across the worlds. Draco Regulus grows up to have his mother's hair and his father's jaw, her complexion and his blue eyes tinged with green, her heart and his dimpled smile. This is also the same: His mother loves him unconditionally. And this is different: In this world, his father does, too.]
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