Author's note: This grew out of some discussions on the Next-Gen Fanatics forum about some of the kids' names. In particular, why Molly Weasley? I'd actually never written her as a witch before, so this grew from there. A couple details are borrowed from my other fics, but then a couple more contradict my other fics, so there you have it.
A.
Molly Weasley falls ill a few weeks after that battle. It's nothing serious at first-a tiredness here, a faintness there-and after all, she's in mourning. But after Arthur protests, she finally lets herself be checked into St. Mungo's.
They don't know what it is, more than just perhaps a curse of some kind? "I know that," Arthur snaps.
"Arthur, really-"
She doesn't stay at the hospital, they're no use, and makes herself busy at home. Knitting, mostly, and letting her family flit in and out around her. This includes Hermione, of course, and Angelina who's been making sure the joke shop doesn't catch fire, and Audrey from the Ministry who likes the idea of a joke shop but doesn't need any special equipment to wreck interdepartmental havoc. It also would have included Harry, but the way Arthur's been accosting him is a little uncomfortable. "There has to be something you can do," he demands-one does not just stand up to and defeat one of the most powerful dark witches in memory without consequence. But Harry doesn't know the tactful way to say "well, yes, I was a bit dead on account of Voldemort and all, I know how high the stakes are."
The ministry is as puzzled by her corpse as St. Mungo's had been by her dying body, and Arthur looks like he wants to snap either his own wand or the coroner's neck. It's a small funeral, at autumn's end-the rest of the world has seen enough funerals already.
B.
Arthur lives in the shed. He takes his meals and his bed inside, but his children have scattered and what remains of his love is bound up in repairing the motorcycle and incessantly tinkering with his collection of gizmos. It's easier than it has ever been, because he's no longer tempted to mix magic with the Muggle artifacts. Magic, even if nobody else will say as much to him, killed his wife.
C.
Fleur refuses to believe she has gone into labor-it is too early, still, but gradually the pain becomes too much to bear. Bill is as patient as he can be, amid her cusses.
"It is no use!" she screams. "I will be up all night!"
"Then I'll stay up with you," he promises. "Our baby is coming!"
And her fears prove overblown. Late that night, their daughter is born. She is small with large eyes, and quiet, but the healers assure them everything is fine. Still, it is exhausting, and it is not until the wee hours of the morning that they are relaxed enough to fill out the birth certificate.
"Eet ees ze third now," Fleur explains.
"Yes," they tell her, "but the baby came a few hours before midnight."
"Then..."
"...Victoire."
D.
Her second pregnancy is nothing like her first. This one kicks-Charlie is convinced that his nephew is a Beater in the making. Of course, some variation is to be expected, but who are they going to ask?
They even pick out a name. "Dominique"-a good choice for a French boy.
When she finally does go into labor, it comes as a relief-at least the kicking will stop. Sure enough, it's another healthy Weasley, crying and flailing right as expected.
It's also a girl.
"Oh, what the hey, you said it could be a girl's name too."
E.
By the time his first daughter is born, Percy is a little more used to the concept of babies. He remembers Ginny's birth, and Ron's, though he confuses the details. Still, nothing can prepare him for the sight of the bald child Audrey grins down at.
Her smile wavers when she sees him. "Now what?"
"Now we're a family," he says, kissing the little one's head. They had been when they got married, when she exploded the stove on mistake, when they put up with takeaway curry for the rest of the week, but now-
"Yeah."
"You. Are you still okay with "Molly"?"
She gives the same empty shrug she's been giving for half a year. "What's not to like?"
F.
Louis comes as somewhat a surprise, though not to Arthur, whose I do believe I'm going to have a grandson glances only die down once a blushing Fleur makes her announcement. By then George and Angelina are married and every once in a while Fleur tries to corner them alone. As the de factomatriarch, she reasons, surely she has the right to pester them about the potential of children? But she was never sorted Gryffindor, never expected to be brave, and the question never comes up.
They wind up with quite a long list of options, boys' and girls' alike, even though Fleur swears this is the last one. When he's born, he looks like a Louis. No reason to it, really.
G.
The tide has turned back to Weasley boys, even if some of them are Potters. No matter; there is Fred Weasley, then James Potter, and little Albus Severus.
Then girls once more. Hermione and Ron's firstborn does take all night to arrive, but when she does the dazzling colors of the sun coming up through the window are hardly the most magical sight to behold.
They're a deserving runner-up, though, and Ron can already imagine telling the story. The way the sun rose over his newborn daughter...
"That's her name."
"What?"
"Rose. It's perfect."
"Yes!"
A few hours later, though, Ron grows apprehensive. "Are you sure we're doing the right thing?"
"What?"
"Giving her another one of those ridiculous flower names!"
They laugh and can't stop.
H.
Lucy is born, and Lily. Then Hugo, and then Roxanne. Fred cannot pronounce her name at first, and so she becomes unofficially "Rockus." To her extended family, one name is as new as the other.
She quickly learns how to pronounce all her letters. Even the tricky "R" is mastered quickly-it's in hername, after all. No chance of cutesy diminutives for Fred. Such is the life of an older brother.
I.
Victoire likes sitting on the window seat and reading about the care and feeding of unicorns. Dominique likes playing outside, swimming until she's exhausted and Bill makes sure she gets back to shore, or wrestling her cousins even though Fleur tells her to go easy on James. But Victoire is always a hint small for her age, Dominique a shade large, so it isn't long before they're passing for twins.
Molly and Lucy scarcely resemble each other. Molly is red-haired and clumsy while Lucy has long, black curls, thin but strong.
They are both their father's daughters, though few get close enough to see any more than their quietness.
J.
After everything, George can still tease, and Dominique-who, in fairness, is usually the one starting trouble-is a prime target. When he whirls around to find her clutching a water balloon (they hope it's only water she's put in it) and stomping in his general direction, he Vanishes it with a twitch of his wand. "Come on, you'll have to be sneakier than that if you want to slither up from behind!"
But, despite her dark sulkings, despite her cackles when Victoire's Puffskein dies, despite her shouting matches with her parents, she's not sorted into Slytherin.
She's sorted into Hufflepuff. Dominique has never been ambitious.
K.
Weasley, yes?
Yes, thinks Molly. To herself, she adds, Grandmum was a Prewett, it won't remember-
I heard that.
Er.
She is the daughter of Audrey Ban, who thrived at the Ministry, behind the scenes, despite a certain disregard for rules. And of Percy Weasley, quiet, but effective. A man of ambition. And a Gryffindor.
You could do well there, you know.
I know. It's been done.
Very well, then.
"Slytherin!"
L.
"Same time next week?" says Louis, slinging his book bag over his shoulder.
"Yeah," shrugs Molly. "Unless you want to meet somewhere else?"
"Library's fine." He rolls his eyes. "Beats the roof."
"What?"
"Oh, Dominique just got detention again. Idiot. Didn't you hear? Victoire said it's all over the school."
"All over her house, maybe." Victoire had been an immediate Gryffindor.
"Huh. Well. Like I said. Library's good."
Molly nods. "If I get detention it'll be for copying your work beforeI try my own."
"My work is rubbish," Louis blushes. Ravenclaws, on average, tend to have a very good grasp of their abilities-half drastically overexaggerating them, half too modest, so it balances out. Louis is one of the latter.
Molly doesn't bother to mutter some niceties-she respects him too much for that.
M.
Victoire Weasley never looks less human than on her birthday. The other students live in a blur of thoughts-shallow sorrow, shallow joy, uncertainty about how to be polite when their parents are assaulted by a barrage of memories they will never understand. Then she stands out more, never expecting a party, hair almost in that bestial glow.
Back home, Fred is huddled in his room, waiting for the next year when he'll be out of his parents' view. And Harry is turning over a letter from Teddy. I just want to know what day to honor my namesake. Is it wrong I get sort of mad at my parents for not giving me anything to work with?
Lots of teenagers resent their parents, Harry finally decides to write. One can't speak ill of the dead.
N.
Anish Kulkarni was shocked when he heard he was a wizard. He was shocked when he got his first wand. When he took the train to school for the first time.
There are a whole series of firsts. He has to introduce himself to everyone he meets. And yet, for the first time, there are dozens and dozens of people who don't say "Oh, Kulkarni, as in the cricketer?" He doesn'thave to blush and nod and roll his eyes at every other handshake.
He never thought he'd go into sport-as fast as he is, and as strong, there's no chance of him being his father. But then there comes the first time he picks up a broomstick. And all of a sudden Anish comes to realize there's a whole new dimension beyond anything he thought possible.
O.
There are one hundred and forty-two staircases in Hogwarts and by the end of his first week there, Fred already knows how to avoid the trick steps. The initial thrill of discovery wears off, but maybe there are other conditional destinations? If some go elsewhere on a Friday, why might some not go elsewhere on the full moon? Or at high noon? Or when you take them two steps at a time? It'll take careful repetition, a Ravenclaw's fastidiousness, but if he takes good enough notes, he knows he can do it.
"I'll make a map," he declares, "of all the staircases."
James Potter snorts. "it's been done."
P.
Lucy Weasley stands close to her immediate family as they wait for the train. She doesn't really care about her dad's cauldrons, but she pays attention-the Trumans are a Ministry family, this is what they deal with.
"Granddad Weasley," says Uncle Ron, "would never forgive you if you married a pureblood."
Q.
Albus doesn't really notice auras so much anymore-he's used to them, used to keeping quiet when not everyone sees things the same way. Aunt Fleur is the only one who didn't raise her eyebrows when she heard, though now "Uncle" Rolf understands too.
But nothing prepares him for the whirl of entering the Great Hall, colors and magic as far as the eye can see. He has to squint and focus-when he is sorted into Hufflepuff his new fellows seem on the whole proud, with pockets of possessiveness here and there. He tries to avoid them.
Lucy joins her sister in Slytherin, but Rose is sorted Gryffindor, and she seems to glow with a fierce sense of accomplishment, like the sun's heat.
R.
Molly and Lucy notice things too. Not auras, like Albus, but people. Who they speak with. Who they get shy around. Who they don't look in the eye.
Lucy quickly befriends, or at least has an ear for, most of the girls in her year. It's gossip, yes, but after all they'll be adults in time. Careers will rise and fall over less.
Molly is much quieter. She has no great gift for Divination, rarely remembering her dreams except the nightmares. Her father is screaming and a cloud of ghosts are swirling around her. Sometimes Lucy is in trouble, choked by the strings of Fred's guitar, but she cannot move.
All the same, she seems to see things coming. "It's not magic," she shrugs, "it's just logic, really."
They call her Omnioculars, her and Lucy both. "You have to go out for Seeker," Scorpius pleads for the twelfth time, "Rose will be insufferable if Gryffindor win again."
"I'm too slow," sighs Lucy. "You do it, Molly, we know you think the Ravenclaw Beater's cute."
Molly blushes, but keeps silent.
S.
Maybe the staircases have been counted. Fine. See if Fred cares. He'll talk to the portraits instead, study them and poke his wand at them and try and figure out how they work. How someone dead and passed on can leave behind a copy of themselves, two-dimensional and not even close to the real thing but mistaken for it by idiots who don't know any better.
It shouldn't be that hard to do, really.
He breezes through his schoolwork in less and less time, spends more and more of it staring into the dark canvas. He makes notations and looks for even the faces in the out-of-the-way corridors.
He doesn't catch on when they change from being curious to annoyed. The centuries of dialects he tries to perfect blur together; it's not that he gets much better at distinguishing the voices of the second millennium, but those of the third grow farther away.
T.
"Well..." Professor Longbottom trails off, "your dad-I don't know, he was always close to your aunt and uncle, Ron and Hermione. Your mum-"
Lily's been told she looks like her mum. And her grandmum. And her other grandmum. Mostly by people who didn't know any or all of them. But no matter. She seeks them out, anyone who wantsto talk to Harry potter's daughter just because she's Harry Potter's daughter. Why shouldn't she? It's hard work, hers.
"I know about my mum," she says impatiently. Ginny was never shy about making a name for herself. The youngest of seven, all the others boys, then Harry Potter's wife, of course she was going to self-promote when she got the chance. "Tell me about my dad."
Her family, she told herself, was used to doing the impossible. After all they'd accomplished, maybe they were just delusional enough to give their children dead names and truly expect them to have a normal childhood.
U.
"That's him."
"Talking to walls."
"The loony."
"That's my brother," says Roxanne, "want to make something of it?"
They sputter about how they don't want to hurt a first year, or a girl. "Leave him alone, then," she demands, "or you'll wish you had."
It takes half the year before she goads someone into a duel. She loses, but he wasn't fighting fair, and she manages to get in one hex while he's distracted.
She refuses to go to the hospital wing, either. Lily and Hugo are flabbergasted to see her bruises, but Fred is too lost in his own world to notice them. She takes this as a triumph.
She loses the next two duels and wins the one after that, loses one and wins two. By Christmas of her second year everyone leaves Fred alone. She never catches up to him in height or age, to be sure, but that marks the moment everyone starts thinking of him as her little brother and not the other way around.
V.
The best part of Quidditch, Lucy decides, is Quidditch players. Oh, not that way, but they're a lot smarter than some of the jocks that dominate the Slytherin common room. They teach her to get up early, and learning to prioritize her time helps her focus more on schoolwork. It's all a game of strategy, and if some of them aren't as conscious of how they'll strategize after Hogwarts-well, that just makes her life that much easier.
Lily's favorite part is when she puts on her robes. Wearing the Potter name, sitting front and center like a brilliant Seeker, is more than worth James' ridiculing and Roxanne prattling about her technique from the stands.
Scorpius Malfoy's favorite part is Rose glowering in disgust after Lily misses an easy Snitch grab. Again.
W.
Molly gets lots of NEWTs. She had picked her schedule haphazardly, reasoning it was better to develop plenty of skills without being sure where she'll need them than to commit too early, planning for jobs that might not exist in the future.
Because there's never a good way of comparing academic standards over time, her aunts and uncles warn her. Some years you need Time-Turners to stand a chance at the even dozen of OWLs, some years you don't. The curricula change and so do the examiners. You can't expect things to stay the same over time.
She bites her tongue. I could have told you that years ago, all of you. Someone should have told you, before I was there to speak.
X.
Teachers get to hand out a lot of detentions, over the years. They keep files on all their students, sorted by name-Neville had felt a pang of pride once he saw how many Longbottoms had passed through the school.
The Weasley cabinet had accumulated more than its share of misdeeds over the years (though certain members had not individually contributed theirs). Still, the faculty had found new ways to be surprised. Neville stifled a laugh as Hugo dutifully cleaned the school trophies-it took a special brand of rulebreaker to bring more Kneazles to school than the permitted one cat. Trust Hermione Granger's son to have found the most effective genetic combinations for breeding, too.
Hugo was a good kid, all his teachers agreed, it was just that his...creative goodness got him in trouble. Still, a few hours of work would hopefully get the point across. And, Neville smiled to himself, a close look at two Special Awards for Services to the School might help.
Y.
A few weeks before he leaves school, Fred pulls it off. It's crazy and insane and probably broke a dozen different school rules if not national laws along the way. His father couldn't be more proud.
But he finally succeeds in casting himself intoa frame, walking between them like any other portrait might, following a portrait into the other copy of herself in another building, and stumbling into his own body again.
Roxanne reckons he's bought himself about a decade of time to experiment. If anything had happened to Fred the quiet Ravenclaw, the family would have been up in arms. But Fred the staircase-leaper, the portrait-speaker, the boundary-pusher? If one day he would happen to unlock some secret door and disappear into it, well, no one would be really surprised.
Z.
Molly Weasley can never serve on the Wizengamot.
She cannot write editorials in the Daily Prophet, swaying the popular opinion. She cannot work for years at the Ministry, learning which wheels to grease and who holds power. She cannot sit on Hogwarts' Board of Governors and bring Headmasters down. She can never make sizable donations to St. Mungo's and the Snidget reserves, can't contribute to the fund for penniless Hogwarts students, can't control when and how her virtues are displayed to the world. She can never help her sister become Minister of Magic.
But Molly Kulkarni can.