Her name was Charity, and Susan knew that it was fitting. Her Auntie Amelia had suggested she take Muggle Studies in her Third Year, not as a soft option – but as a way to truly understand that muggles were not quite so different from witches and wizards. She had been hesitant, but had soon found a great love in not only the subject that introduced her to films and pop music, but also to the woman who brought them into her life.
Charity Burbage was a half-blood witch in her mid-thirties, with golden blonde hair that was most often caught up in a headscarf. Her brown eyes sparkled with excitement and joy as she introduced her students to muggle history, literature, and art. She reveled in their expressions as they learned of electricity, and in her more advanced classes, the technology and advancements being made in sciences that were far above the understanding or comprehension of wizards.
When Susan had started thinking of her professor as 'Charity', rather than 'Professor Burbage', she couldn't quite pinpoint. Perhaps it had been after she had congratulated Susan on her creative exam answers after Fifth Year, or in Fourth Year when they had learned how to cook the muggle way, Charity swooping gracefully between students and managing to salvage a surprising amount of cooking attempts. Perhaps it had been in Sixth Year, when she comforted two tearful Third Years who were being forced to drop her class by their parents, who were fearful of the 'political climate'. Charity had made sure they knew that they could come to her if they wanted to learn unofficially, but always in ways that wouldn't endanger their safety.
Susan knew that Charity would never have abandoned Hogwarts. Not willingly. After the war was over and the dust was settling over Britain, Susan looked for her. In deserted moors and abandoned castles, in out-of-place cottages, in large muggle cities, she would wander, sometimes aimlessly in search of her.
She would follow tips she had found in the muggle news about women matching Charity's description, or enthusiasm. She spent years searching for the woman who had been beacon of light for her when she was young.
She could never bring herself to stop looking. Even as she settled into a job integrating muggle technologies for the magical world, she had Charity to thank, and to think of.
Susan never found anything of Charity, but she never gave up hope that she would
